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

[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)