SUGGESTION: Turn Bluemage into a regular job - Limited Job>Advanced Job (An Approach)

[TeraTyrantShadic]

Stereotypically most of blue mage is damage and or other means of incapacitating the foe, in the history of blue mage spells most did something offensive "stereotypically"

Allow me to correct you on that, "Blue Mages focus on Blue Magic, a special subset of magic that uses attacks otherwise exclusive to enemies. Blue Mages often have a wide range of usefulness due to the varied spells they gain." There are all kinds of spells they learn from the weakest to the strongest but the main key point of Blue Mage is the usefulness in a variety of situation meaning it is adaptable. 'True Blue Mage' can be easily solved as Blue Mage follow 2 core identities. They learn from monster spells and will use these spells depending on the situation and they are Versatile including equipment wise (However this cannot be applied to FFXIV since each class has its own specific weapon and share the same gear set at end game but they have their own relic armor). There is nothing about it being overpowered is a requirement. As for the versatility I'll get more onto that later in the post.

Although.. I still think that blue mage would have made a great candidate for tank, assuming it was built that was from the ground up, the current blue tank that we have in game is not what I mean lol (as the hyper forced trinity, overly balanced, undertuned, tank blue mage is, I wouldn't call as nearly as exciting as playing an actual tank job; although, healer blue is a bit more exciting since you get a lot more damage spells lol, unlike our actual healer jobs currently XD).

I would agree, however I just think they could do more than just tanking. Granted what we have right now isn't the best option for it to be able to tank but it has a high DPS output, maybe in 5.4 we'll get more for tanking and healing. If this is the case about preventing Blue Mage from abusing the role system there is already a solution for that. Leaving Aetherial Mimicry at level 60, forcing the Blue Mages to be DPS role in earlier levels then at Level 60. It is foolproof had they not made it level by letting it get carried by friends, because now people can simply obtain it and not even have the necessary skills to fully utilize Aetherial mimicry or even the role.

But in terms of 'too much?' and premades vs DF I don't think you have to undertune blue- especially if you made limited (which I think is important, to not remove the limited side) and normal a flip of the job stone, then you might have a few skills change a bit depending on which side you're using, in this way you could make aetherial mimicry a different spell based on limited or normal and just from that the rest of the issues are gone (a concept that might sound strange until you consider every combat job in this game besides blue mage does this when you enter PvP, this is something SE has done already in a sense).

Honestly it is better off as a Normal Job with some of the functionalities from the Limited Job. What they have right now is a great foundation for a Blue Mage to become a normal job namely because of the way you can pick and choose skills. In previous FF games we could only have a set of skills and we are stuck with all of them throughout and that is the point of it in a single player game to be like a collectible and the need for swapping them out is not necessary. However in FFXI they introduce Blue Mage in a MMO setting and it worked, they are overpowered but so is every other class with the right gear set, since that game solely relies on you having that BiS for your job. If what could be done in FFXI works then FFXIV just need to take inspiration from it and in this case they did (excluding the level requirement for spells where you have to be at a certain level to use a specific Blue Mage spell and the point limit system where each spell costs different amount of point but overall there is 20 Spells Slots and 80 points is the limit).

I kind of hope mimicry as a strict trinity spell goes away, and reintroduce the concepts through kit building instead

I... STRONGLY DISAGREE! Mainly because we now live in a time where everyone has a job in real life and I'll explain later. We can do something like Star Wars the Old Republic did and have Flashpoint where no matter what the roles are, all roles are neutral and the way to heal is through interacting with a glowing blue tank in a boss fight or when out of combat channel your heals. We can do the same with FFXIV except with potions, but that means people are now forced to pick up Alchemist and buy or craft HQ potions. We can still go with the interacting with the environment route, but I doubt some people will actually go and interact with it just so they can try and keep their DPS high and that only applies to dungeons. What about raids and trials? Ones specifically using Tanks and Healers Limit Breaks. There is a reason why Modern MMOs have the trinity role and that is because Duty Finder or similar systems like it even before duty finder are the main reason for the roles to easily identify who is playing what job. It is a major time saver, back then you had to shout for a group invite (In other MMOs not FFXIV) for just about anything including farming dungeons just to level and sometimes even when you shout literally right after they say it they reply 'sorry but spot is taken'. Hence why we MMOs nowadays have the Duty Finder these days everyone gets a slot. As for kit building, why not both. You can still have the kit building and the roles at the same time. It works with some other MMOs so you can apply it to FFXIV. However FFXIV isn’t about kit building, if you’re referring to FFXI then only Puppetmaster, Blue Mage are building their own Mod kit and Spell kit respectively. The other kit building is gear and in FFXI gear gives additional bonuses with different variety of stats being used. It may not work in FFXIV mainly because of the way we have gear now. We are doing BiS for Substats and the main stats materia are now useless even elemental materia. Overall it is better to keep the trinity as is and for any future content of sorts since it allows a much easier and convenient time for people to queue for certain activities. Don’t force others to use Party Finder if they don’t want to, in which SE tried doing so with Blue Mage. It is better if Blue Mage has both option than 1.