Quote Originally Posted by Shougun View Post
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You have looked through just 3 versions of Blue Mage that much I understand but there are over 6 versions of it (Not including the spinoffs) from the Final Fantasy series. Your generalization is more about the stereotypes and not the actual generalization. Yes most of the spells in these games are related to support and damage. However that is not Blue Mage in general. Blue Mage in general is a mage that practices Blue Magic and is versatile to the battle/situation.

What you have just mentioned is the stereotypical type of attacks it has majority of the time throughout the Final Fantasy Series, but that is just solely focusing on it as a DPS rather than the other two roles as well. Blue Mage is VERSATILE meaning it is fitting to almost every situation. This is an MMO so people are going to have expectations of it to fit all 3 roles. Especially when FFXI has successfully done it before. In FFXIV’s case it is doable, difficult but doable but they first need the right puzzle piece which is why I stress the fact that the class needs the Job Gauge. If it were to fit in, it needs one especially to balance it between roles to prevent powerful hybrids. Red Mage is one as they can DPS and Heal, however people tend to ignore Vercure as it can slow their DPS down. Which already prevents it at a mechanical level, with Blue Mage however the same can be applied but 2nd factor is needed to prevent the spam which is why a job gauge for it is a better solution.

I never said it was easy, besides it is doable. A tall order it may be, but it is very much doable with time and dedication from the development team but they rush it before 5.0 because they didn't have the solution before the next expansion.

I had a hunch (You can skip this sentence/part), why release a job half baked/done right before the next expansion and say it took you a year to make it. I kept wondering and speculated, maybe they were planning to bring it to 5.0 but didn’t have the time and resources necessary to allow it to come to fruition. Then when I heard 5.4 will be a new update for Blue Mage I thought maybe that was the case maybe they were planning on a full job for it but 5.0 wasn’t it’s time to shine. At this point with my assumption I can only speculate further.

They had a year to work on Blue Mage and yet there this is what we get, a broken mess. However when the 5.15 update for Blue Mage was released they added more emphasis on group play and roles with the new spells and the key spell Aetherial Mimicry. The reason why I say they should have the customization is mainly because we have yet to see the job gauge. Who knows maybe they'll add or not. Because most job gauges for mages (Except Summoner) are a build up type of gauge. If you lock the powerful skills behind such a gauge you then have forced the player to choose to either tank, heal or DPS properly. Look at Red mage, can’t do a full combo until you are 80+ in both white and black magic. Black Mages need to wait 30 seconds to get 1 Polyglot to even cast Xenoglossy. The same could be applied to all 3 roles. Healer already has proven it with the Faerie and Healing gauge, and Tank with Oath, Beast and Blood Gauge. It has been proven already in the game that the Build Up type gauge is most used universally in every job. Which is why it is doable for it to be applied for all 3 roles. If all 3 roles use it, then surely a job with all 3 roles can do the same as well.

What I have said about Limited is about the system itself. “Limited Job is just a copycat of the Normal Job System but with restrictions” It isn’t a tall order because If you just remove the restrictions on the Limited Job system. You’ll come to realize it is exactly the same system with just minor changes. If Blue Mage were turned into a normal job then integrating it wouldn’t be much of a difficulty as these are systems that categorizes jobs. They don’t provide content rather they are just like houses holding in furniture and its residents. With the residents being the Jobs and the furniture being the Content.

With the way they implemented Aetherial Mimicry, it is as only certain spells get boosted when under a specific pseudo-role. Forcing players to have a specific set of abilities to make full use of Aetherial Mimicry is one of the ways of balancing it. Since it’ll be too powerful if a Blue Mage can DPS and Heal at the same time so forcing players to sacrifice slots for the abilities needed for that role, can be a good idea. You can still build kits no problem. But as a Healer you heal and spam a DoT and a spam cast (Glare, Broil II, Malefic IV, Dia, Bio & Miasma, Combust III). As for Tank you just spam a rotation and try to build up your gauge as soon as possible ready to have enough to Mitigate an incoming Tankbuster (in the case of Paladin) or Deal damage (WAR, DRK, GNB)

Versatility is one of the core identities that gives Blue Mage its flair hence why it should Multirole. Even in FFXI Blue Mage are used for DPS, Support, Tanking and if you can Healing. Aetherial Mimicry will only force people to take certain abilities, however that doesn’t mean it is mandatory, I mean you can pick up a Tank pseudo-role and still have Pom Cure (even though it is not ideal). The freedom is still there. If I want I can toss away Gobshield and use Pom Cure and replace the slot meant for Gobshield with something else. It is not rigid that I can tell. They can still make a great kit even when it is a Normal Job.

Limited Job does the opposite instead of expressing creative freedom. All it ever did was provide filler content and not much to job improvements, the only improvement we see on the job is more new spells and level cap increase. There is nothing creative from that as people can reuse an old attack animation or the spell’s effects from a monster and slap it onto a Blue Mage and then readjusting the spell meant to be used by a player. If they really are expressing creative freedom then where is the experimental job gauge, so far with normal jobs there is even more creative freedom. Even then you can’t express true creative freedom because this is an MMO, you have to balance it no matter if the job is Limited or Normal. If it was a single player game the thought process would be different and people will try to be more ambitious and creative. This is an MMO where you have to balance, nerf, omit and make sure everything is working.

Hence why I said Limited Job is a flawed system and it'll never work, it has already contradicted everything the developers said it was meant for. Which were Solo-play, staying in a dungeon for 45 mins doesn't count as a soloing. Masked Carnival is a solo play but people thought everything else is also solo play which isn't. It is solo play for only one content and learning spells is still chance based even in duty finder when you go in solo; Less Suited for Party-based game play, We have spell related to group play and we even have achievements going in as a all Blue Mage party to clear Bahamut and Alexander (A8S & A12S werent easy), there is even an incentive for you to play as a group to get a spell in just 1 run and it is a guaranteed learn. Not just that but the group can be ANY party composition meaning you can go in as PLD, WHM, BLU and MNK and still get the 100% learning rate so long you are SYNCED. Like I said at the start of this paragraph Limited Job is useless and we don't need it as we can easily move Blue Mage into a normal job status after balancing it fully. If they want for Beastmaster and Puppetmaster they can just work on the pet system they have right now and slowly rework it and then add in beastmaster and puppetmaster as a Normal Job. We don't need limited jobs as it does not provide anything of use neither does the reward appeal many to go and redo it again.