Blue mage is a waste of potential, change my mind.

[Auryan]

I never said I was against his point.
His examples just suck lol. (I actually agree with his 1st statement. Not so much the 2nd statement)

Though I do disagree to the idea "its not possible to make something work, with "enough" flavor, even if its not 100% the same amount of flavor."
But we all know people would complain still, even if its 99% the same.

The example you used as RDM by way of SMN/SCH isn't just a question of flavor, it's a much more impactful gameplay decision that requires a lot of balance. RDM having Vercure that nods to its supportive roots in the series is different than having a separate job crystal that is a full-on healer.

Currently they only partially gave true blue, they still did the things they said they didn't want to do (multiple spells have been adjusted for balance reasons).

They are more gameplay than balance changes. Likely as a result of people complaining that spamming Off-guard on one target for decent damage and poor on everything else. The damage bonus has been baked into the spells and the numbers are mostly comparable to the changes.
The "Brush with Death" status effect doesn't have any practical influence on the job. Prior to the changes, BLU would rarely use these spells outside of maybe as combo finishers and moogle tome farming. It's only gotten more potent in that capacity since the lvl 60 update and tome farming can work around and/or doesn't care about the debuff. This change mostly affected the puzzle cheesing that was going in SB. I guess you can count that as "balancing" if you squint just enough.

I mean for starters all the 50 up job quests always end in a caveat from the trainer telling you to go find/learn this skill. Which becomes a requirement to continue the quest later on down the road. Why couldnt this just be the flavor of BLU's manditory skills within the framework, as it would be a normal job. Since BLU has an actual trainer, like all Jobs/Job quest do, its just because their quests arent the same, come to x locatation, talk to x destination, fight enemy in preplanned purple fog location?(they do also have a few of these types as well, to be fair)

Notice how since HW that job quests provide little to no abilities? It's because players haven't been keen on doing them. Now a single job should be exempt from that and do something that no other job does anymore? For job flavor? Ostracizing BLU for job fantasy would only work for the BLU fanboys, and not the majority of players. Making a job accessible to as many people as possible is what the developers want from a standard job.

[MaraD_]

The example you used as RDM by way of SMN/SCH isn't just a question of flavor, it's a much more impactful gameplay decision that requires a lot of balance. RDM having Vercure that nods to its supportive roots in the series is different than having a separate job crystal that is a full-on healer.

I know it would require that amount of balance/effort, but they already did that with SMN/SCH. I also meant RDM in place of them. As in, we pretend SCH/SMN were never made, but RDM was released with 2.0 as the "healer/caster job". All effort into making a shield healer and DoT caster, were instead put into how to make a dual cast Vercure healer, and a dual Cast Ver"nuke" caster.
Honestly take the current DPS RDM for the caster, and then pretty much remove some of the kit for the Healer version, while slapping on your emergency heals. Lastly, what seems to be the most obvious additional feature, is to add a "trait" to lower MP cost on heals. (5.0 healer builds were made more simplistic, so this type of RDM would never be allowed to exist)
If they werent trying to balance SMN/SCH, they would put all that same effort into RDMs black/white builds instead. (And SCH/SMN wouldnt have to be tied to the same class, allowing for those 2 jobs to be closer to their original flavors w/o causing issues with the base class they share)

Also "Good enough" is literally every single job in the game. There is no job in the game that carries over 100% of prior elements, that add to its historical flavor.
Every single healer who remembers casting raise on undead, at least tried to see if they could cast raise on undead. And every single one of them thought "This probably wont work... but imma try anyways!"
Not a single person said "They ruined the fantasy of being a WHM!"

This applies to BLU. Getting actions that enemies use, w/e the method may be, is the core "good enough" feature. If you want to be more accurate to FF5, you make them melee casters who have to get hit by the spell, and have a 100% chance of learning it. For some people, this would be "even closer" to what they consider "true bluemage".
At no point, does any sane person say "Its just not bluemage, unless I can instant ko every boss in the game". Just as being a WHM with holy magic is "good enough" and being able to instant KO undead isnt what most people consider "Its not WHM unless it can instant KO every undead boss"

Lastly, the MOST jack of all trades role in the game (both offensive and defensive) in Stormblood, and prior, were tanks. Tanks could have potent self heals, potent AoE and reasonable single target nukes, along with potent/effective control/buffs/debuffs. So I disagree with the idea that jack of all trades cant be in the game, unless youre idea of jack of all trades has to be able to be healer, tank, melee dps, ranged dps, and caster dps. (which is a whole different argument to make, since old FFs werent designed to function that same way, nor BLUs)