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

[Shougun]

This is actually funny because pre ShB/SB Summoner had a somewhat workable tank pet, and then 2 dps pets(still does, but i had seen some clever SMN use titan egi as our tank on bosses if tanks died or whatnot, moreso in Deep Dungeon runs, but i wont count those)

I was thinking the same thing looking over the lists. XI just magnified the amount of spells BLU traditionally had by a long margin, but most seem to say "an attack that does this also" mainly looks like, most a damage/debuffer which i mean.. it seems to fit. I never really considered older BLU a healer, or a tank either to be honest. though i guess the original conception of it, in V did equip swords and wear medium heavy armor. I am still confused about this all 3 roles in one thing. XI BLU's werent even pure i bet. I bet they had /WHM and now they are good tank/healers, as was explained to me about the subjob system

I could be wrong though, naybe BLU was an exclusive job in XI which you had to be pure with no subjob, so they slammed in those non traditional refresh and healing spells to make it semi comparable to the other jobs with actual subjobs.

Yeah in FFXI you had this concept of a sub job which would in essence give you half your level of the other job. So if you were like level 40 you'd /also/ have level 20 of the other in your kit. This is how Summoner would main as healer because summoners in that game had crazy mp and so they then sub job white mage and spam their cures. Emnity in that game was easy to obtain so spamming low level spells allowed you to dodge that issue too, like if you were casting big spells you could easily steal hate - cast benediction and you stole the whole zone's hate lol.

So Blu could become main healer after they learned magic fruit which was akin to cure 3.5 but low mana cost and white mage as their subjob. Plus some cure related items. Of course in the game not only did they have subjobs but weapons weren't as strict, so you could have a bow as a Samurai for example. This allowed for some quite high diversity in builds. FFXIV is very very strict in comparison, but it makes the builds easier to tighten up for both balance but also mechanical interest (cool mechanics that relate to each other).

BLU if you weren't trying to do something funky was absolutely a damage dealer first though, and they were pretty good at it. But due to the subjob system you could do some funky stuff. I still remember when Dragoon / Samurai allowed you to basically endlessly spam penta thrust due to the TP gain from Samurai lol.

Also in general since you commented to me you weren't sure what they mean about all roles in one, I think what they're describing is this idea that limited -> normal.. like literally as it is (with maybe a few tweaks). So that means Blue Mage would be able to be a tank, healer, or DD based on what role they queued for and the Mimicry they had loaded.

[MaraD_]

the subjob system you could do some funky stuff. I still remember when Dragoon / Samurai allowed you to basically endlessly spam penta thrust due to the TP gain from Samurai lol.

Technically not "funky" as that was the sole intentional design of how DRG was meant to be played. The interviews explained they ruined DRG by doing that, but also had the mentality that the players would eventually come up with a tactic they didnt forsee, and so they usually didnt bother fixing "nerfed" jobs. Only "too OP" jobs/abilities.
Of course the players didnt come up with a work around, but the developers came up with an alternative way to fix DRG, which was an indirect fix.
(1) Help all 2handers accuracy in ToAU.
(2) Make very low HP enemies who were weak to piercing damage. (This also helped THF, as it was also considered rather weak, and could use piercing dmg on the same enemy variety)
When it came to endgame, DRG was mostly fine as it was, so they didnt need to fix it for endgame bosses, so thats why they stuck to this halfhearted bandaid fix.

EDIT: according to the devs, regarding BLU, western players used BLU as a melee DPS. Japanese players mostly saw it as an equivalent to SMN. A job thats meant to be a Caster, but better off being used as a healer. (Most JP groups didnt let BLU DPS) The Devs said they personally saw BLU as mostly a Caster DPS. They mentioned this, as justification for nerfing BLUs melee DPS, and buffing nukes. BLU did need the buff to nukes, but the melee nerf was uneeded, as BLU was already one of the weakest DPS on normal mobs past Lv27. BLU didnt get most of its magical DPS until later, so this left BLU with a large level gap of being a really crappy DPS. (Roughly half the DPS of a normal damage dealer) and other gaps at the tail end, and start of this gap, which made it just slightly weaker. (maybe 20%? These are of course rough estimates)
So the devs did confirm there were intended to be DPS (Caster, not melee mage) but were also given options to be helpful in other fronts. (Melee options were intended for tanking, not for DPS, since they assumed u would be in melee range if u tanked, and melee spells should be weaker, since they didnt have cast bars. Im pretty sure they embraced the melee BLU at some point after i quit)

[Shougun]

Technically not "funky" as that was the sole intentional design of how DRG was meant to be played. The interviews explained they ruined DRG by doing that, but also had the mentality that the players would eventually come up with a tactic they didnt forsee, and so they usually didnt bother fixing "nerfed" jobs. Only "too OP" jobs/abilities.
Of course the players didnt come up with a work around, but the developers came up with an alternative way to fix DRG, which was an indirect fix.
(1) Help all 2handers accuracy in ToAU.
(2) Make very low HP enemies who were weak to piercing damage. (This also helped THF, as it was also considered rather weak, and could use piercing dmg on the same enemy variety)
When it came to endgame, DRG was mostly fine as it was, so they didnt need to fix it for endgame bosses, so thats why they stuck to this halfhearted bandaid fix.

EDIT: according to the devs, regarding BLU, western players used BLU as a melee DPS. Japanese players mostly saw it as an equivalent to SMN. A job thats meant to be a Caster, but better off being used as a healer. (Most JP groups didnt let BLU DPS) The Devs said they personally saw BLU as mostly a Caster DPS. They mentioned this, as justification for nerfing BLUs melee DPS, and buffing nukes. BLU did need the buff to nukes, but the melee nerf was uneeded, as BLU was already one of the weakest DPS on normal mobs past Lv27. BLU didnt get most of its magical DPS until later, so this left BLU with a large level gap of being a really crappy DPS. (Roughly half the DPS of a normal damage dealer) and other gaps at the tail end, and start of this gap, which made it just slightly weaker. (maybe 20%? These are of course rough estimates)
So the devs did confirm there were intended to be DPS (Caster, not melee mage) but were also given options to be helpful in other fronts. (Melee options were intended for tanking, not for DPS, since they assumed u would be in melee range if u tanked, and melee spells should be weaker, since they didnt have cast bars. Im pretty sure they embraced the melee BLU at some point after i quit)

Really really early on in FFXI the multi hit combos used to give more tp back, so with samurai dragoon could near endlessly go from weapon skill to weapon skill. You're right that they made other changes to two handed weapons and stuff, but long long ago tp from multi hit attacks got a bit silly and they went out of their way to nerf it (iirc monk had this with their relic and their 8 fold attacks). Although that they nerfed it wasn't the point, just that by having certain sub jobs your play style shifted massively.


That we don't have that system, so the variety FFXI offered doesn't necessarily translate well here and that the variety wasn't a reflect on your main job as much as it was a reflection on your main & sub job together (like SMN/WHM makes you a main healer, but SMN on its own in that game was not a main healer). BLU / WHM is a main healer but BLU / NIN is definitely not.

Which again isn't to say you can't have blue be kind of special here in FFXIV, it's just that using FFXI comes with a whole bunch of funk that we don't have here and so BLU / WHM isn't necessarily == BLU. BLU is == to BLU (so like in FFXI if you never added a subjob to your BLU they'd be an awful main healer but still not a bad damage dealer). Although I want to add I agree with you that often the funk was intended lol.

As an aside I played BLU as a caster first (most of my time spent casting, although of course I absolutely took advantage of weapon skills and self combo'ing if there wasn't someone to work with), and didn't have anyone try to correct me on the western way to play (calling it that since you mentioned it like that, honestly first time I heard of it, but I also didn't read much in the way of guides)- but my name sort of got me into a lot JP parties even if I didn't talk almost at all so.. lol /shrug.

[MaraD_]

Really really early on in FFXI the multi hit combos used to give more tp back, so with samurai dragoon could near endlessly go from weapon skill to weapon skill.

If i remember correctly, it was roughly 50 TP return. It wasnt as endless as MNK with the relic weapon. (which literally was) But I think some of the better examples of "funky" SJ stuff, would more technically be NIN, since they quite literally didnt intend players to use NIN tanks, nor /NIN for its survivability for tanking. (Which to the other poster, Ninjas Utsusemi spell allowed them to dodge the next 3 attacks. they had another version of this that gave them another 3 evades. When the job came out, i believe it was something like teir1 was 4 evades, and teir2 was 5 evades. This let them chain them together infinitely, never getting hit. So of course everyone was JOB/NIN to make it easy to just never get hit.
They nerfed NIN, but they didnt want to completely ruin peoples new found strategy, so they compromised with 3+3, instead of 4+5. You still need a refresher to give the NIN haste, and the NIN needed to gear for more evasion/haste, in order to limit the amount of times they got hit inbetween evasions. They also allowed AoE spells to break all evasions in a single attack.

For the same expansion, they released SAM, which they intended players to use as a Tank. (BTW this is the 1st time they made a tank job, because WAR and PLD werent actually intended to tank. They intentionally designed the game to try and make it impossible to hold hate for too long, so as to have enemies bounce between all the melee DPS. More on this at the bottom) Not only would SAM be a terrible tank in comparison to PLD, most players were tired of using WAR as a tank, because it just simply put wasnt good enough to mitigate enough dmg to actually kill enemies effectively. SAM would have barely been better than WAR. So everyone now used a bunch of DPS, or WARs, who subbed NIN, and japanese parties would have the mob bounce around to different melee DPS, so as to have it eat everyone's evasions, and try to let no one actually take dmg. Western players refused to try this for many years, with maybe a handful per server who would try it. Western players would only try the next tactic of 2 WAR/NINs, who would bounce the mob between them. This was reasonably effective. A bit risky at time, due to the amount of damage they took (they were geared for Attack/Acc, not Defense) but ironically enough, westerners were the ones who decided to make a full party of "DPS with /NIN" for Lv75 party content. With the JP players usually refusing to do it for a long while. (But the JP players were still very effective at the old method, while most western players couldnt use the old method, w/o lossing efficiency by massive amounts.)

As for the whole "1st tank job", they intentionally tried to make the game not have a dedicated tank. Due to how old FFs were designed to just have the "Front row" jobs take hits. (Its more complex than that, but w/e) Threat was designed to decay over time, along with a players threat going down massively if they take dmg, the more dmg they took, the more threat lost. This would ensure the mob jumps around to different players. Cures also generated 0 threat, so healers never had to worry about their threat. BLM nuke threat was also slightly lower back then, and pretty much WARs provoke was meant for emergencies, or for BLMs heavy nukes at Lv50.
Elemental magical "Weapon Skills" were the most powerful attacks, and players quickly realized that WHM could do as much DPS as a DPS. So SE nerfed WHMs DPS, and nerfed ALL magical "Weapon Skills" (They were considered absolutely useless for years, due to how weak they were) They gave cures enmity, and magical attacks more enmity.
This lead to players stacking WARs, or /WAR for provoke, since healers were pretty much tanking 20-50% of the fight. IF the enemy landed a single tank buster on them, it was over. (Most melee cant survive tank busters from mobs, only 2 could at that level. MNK (with its insainely high HP) or PLD (with its higher defense than WAR) PLD still died maybe one in 50 tank busters, if they werent perfectly geared/topped off. WAR seemed to die 1 in 8, until they got an ability to double defense, then they didnt have that issue until Lv50+~ish)

PLD would get hurt, and then heal itself. This made the monster go right back to attacking the PLD. Which in turn lead to the PLD needing to heal themselves again. This never ending loop turned PLD into the default tank. So once NIN came out, "not getting hit" means the tank doesnt lose the threat from getting hit. Which in turn helpped them "not lose threat". Of course they had to gain the threat, since their DPS was really bad as a non caster, or non physical ranged DPS. (most ppl used them for melee, which they were nearly terrible at, except in some level ranges) NIN hardly died, but it was easy for a good DPS to pull threat and tank/die. PLD could still die easily, but it dealt no DPS since it spam healed itself.

And thats when SE decided to make SAM, a weaker version of WAR, with an additional weak mitigation option. If you paired them together, a SAM/WAR would have more mitigation than a WAR/SAM or a WAR/MNK. But with how fragile a PLD was, and PLD was at least twice as good as a WAR, a SAM/WAR being only... 10% better wasnt good enough, and NIN on the other hand was a game changer.

As an aside I played BLU as a caster first, and didn't have anyone try to correct me on the western way to play

I dont mean thats what everyone told u to do, but just what was popular, and how the west generally saw it. Everyone saw the trailers and were like "OMG, its the melee caster we always wished RDm were!!!1!"
I do know a few people eventually refused to invite BLUs if they weren't /THF (which, if u were going to melee, was one of the best SJ options honestly. But for caster was a terrible SJ)
Like I said, I played BLU as every role at some point or another, and thats what I loved most about it. Id intentionally try to be different roles for CoP missions, just to see what I could do. (As time went on, I realize CoP missions were actually easier than ud imagine, and almost any job combo was possible, even having NO HEALERS! Only 2 fights were actually hard enough to limit your party comp options. (Omega/Ultima, and the Pots fight right before the final boss)

[Shougun]

edit incoming...

If i remember correctly, it was roughly 50 TP return. It wasnt as endless as MNK with the relic weapon. (which literally was) But I think some of the better examples of "funky" SJ stuff, would more technically be NIN, since they quite literally didnt intend players to use NIN tanks, nor /NIN for its survivability for tanking. (Which to the other poster, Ninjas Utsusemi spell allowed them to dodge the next 3 attacks. they had another version of this that gave them another 3 evades. When the job came out, i believe it was something like teir1 was 4 evades, and teir2 was 5 evades. This let them chain them together infinitely, never getting hit. So of course everyone was JOB/NIN to make it easy to just never get hit.
They nerfed NIN, but they didnt want to completely ruin peoples new found strategy, so they compromised with 3+3, instead of 4+5. You still need a refresher to give the NIN haste, and the NIN needed to gear for more evasion/haste, in order to limit the amount of times they got hit inbetween evasions. They also allowed AoE spells to break all evasions in a single attack.

For the same expansion, they released SAM, which they intended players to use as a Tank. (BTW this is the 1st time they made a tank job, because WAR and PLD werent actually intended to tank. They intentionally designed the game to try and make it impossible to hold hate for too long, so as to have enemies bounce between all the melee DPS. More on this at the bottom) Not only would SAM be a terrible tank in comparison to PLD, most players were tired of using WAR as a tank, because it just simply put wasnt good enough to mitigate enough dmg to actually kill enemies effectively. SAM would have barely been better than WAR. So everyone now used a bunch of DPS, or WARs, who subbed NIN, and japanese parties would have the mob bounce around to different melee DPS, so as to have it eat everyone's evasions, and try to let no one actually take dmg. Western players refused to try this for many years, with maybe a handful per server who would try it. Western players would only try the next tactic of 2 WAR/NINs, who would bounce the mob between them. This was reasonably effective. A bit risky at time, due to the amount of damage they took (they were geared for Attack/Acc, not Defense) but ironically enough, westerners were the ones who decided to make a full party of "DPS with /NIN" for Lv75 party content. With the JP players usually refusing to do it for a long while. (But the JP players were still very effective at the old method, while most western players couldnt use the old method, w/o lossing efficiency by massive amounts.)

As for the whole "1st tank job", they intentionally tried to make the game not have a dedicated tank. Due to how old FFs were designed to just have the "Front row" jobs take hits. (Its more complex than that, but w/e) Threat was designed to decay over time, along with a players threat going down massively if they take dmg, the more dmg they took, the more threat lost. This would ensure the mob jumps around to different players. Cures also generated 0 threat, so healers never had to worry about their threat. BLM nuke threat was also slightly lower back then, and pretty much WARs provoke was meant for emergencies, or for BLMs heavy nukes at Lv50.
Elemental magical "Weapon Skills" were the most powerful attacks, and players quickly realized that WHM could do as much DPS as a DPS. So SE nerfed WHMs DPS, and nerfed ALL magical "Weapon Skills" (They were considered absolutely useless for years, due to how weak they were) They gave cures enmity, and magical attacks more enmity.
This lead to players stacking WARs, or /WAR for provoke, since healers were pretty much tanking 20-50% of the fight. IF the enemy landed a single tank buster on them, it was over. (Most melee cant survive tank busters from mobs, only 2 could at that level. MNK (with its insainely high HP) or PLD (with its higher defense than WAR) PLD still died maybe one in 50 tank busters, if they werent perfectly geared/topped off. WAR seemed to die 1 in 8, until they got an ability to double defense, then they didnt have that issue until Lv50+~ish)

PLD would get hurt, and then heal itself. This made the monster go right back to attacking the PLD. Which in turn lead to the PLD needing to heal themselves again. This never ending loop turned PLD into the default tank. So once NIN came out, "not getting hit" means the tank doesnt lose the threat from getting hit. Which in turn helpped them "not lose threat". Of course they had to gain the threat, since their DPS was really bad as a non caster, or non physical ranged DPS. (most ppl used them for melee, which they were nearly terrible at, except in some level ranges) NIN hardly died, but it was easy for a good DPS to pull threat and tank/die. PLD could still die easily, but it dealt no DPS since it spam healed itself.

And thats when SE decided to make SAM, a weaker version of WAR, with an additional weak mitigation option. If you paired them together, a SAM/WAR would have more mitigation than a WAR/SAM or a WAR/MNK. But with how fragile a PLD was, and PLD was at least twice as good as a WAR, a SAM/WAR being only... 10% better wasnt good enough, and NIN on the other hand was a game changer.

Like for all the nostalgia of talking about FFXI lol. But it also reminds me, well more re-solidifies, how awkwardly balanced and the weird expectations they had for players, ... almost that feeling no one tested the game as a "player" before releasing the design. Not to say I didn't enjoy it, just a feeling that they were designing stuff in a vacuum, maybe even a vacuum within their own company (like one person's input and testing and that's that).

Maybe its a culture thing like "okay we made it do this so we are going to test it like we made it", but at least from my perspective that seems like.. ye...a..h..... so... whatever you wanted your users to do is probably not what they're going to do lol.

Like ninja tank and their Pikachu face when players used it as such. Feels as if some higher up was like "yeah this will be great, add it in boyysszz" and someone may have thought to say something but was silent and then later they're shocked that they just made the best tank in the game on accident. For penta thrust I think it was 60 TP, but honestly doesn't matter lol. Was just a random example stuck in my mind where sub jobs changed how you'd approach things (a job may be tank, healer, or dd, all because of a few choice picked pieces of gear and a sub job), but there are so many examples (and many intended).