Quote Originally Posted by RyuDragnier View Post
That is the point I'm making. BLU can never work within the normal rules of FFXIV because it has NEVER worked within the normal rules of a FF game. It has always been an outlier.
Absolute hogwash. My least favorite argument around Blue Mage, which utterly reeks of historical revision. Does Blue Magic in the series open up some unique broken opportunities? Sure, FF5 had a few things going on with like, Dark Spark fiddling with enemies' levels, FF7 had Beta and Matra Magic just be incredible spells for when you get them, there's the aforementioned Degenerator from 8, Limit Glove from 9 gives you a way to hit 9999 early if you don't want to grind Dragon Crest or Thievery.

But Blue Magic as a kit is far from being naturally defined as *the* "game breaker" in any game its in, there are far more broken things in each of those games that Blue Magic takes a back-seat to. FF5 is held up as one of the big examples of Blue Mage being broken, yet Chemists, Mystic Knights (Break sword!), Time Mages (Quick + sap?), even Beastmasters were all able to break the game more accessibly and easily. In fact, Blue Mage relies on Chemist for most of its level tweaking strategies, and that's even been patched out of releases from the mobile version on. Degenerator sure seems flashy in FF8, but junctioning Death 100 to your weapon accomplishes much the same without risk of epilepsy.

What does Blue Mage have consistently then, if it "breaking the game" is overblown, or at least downplayed versus other game-breakers in each game? Why, a very solid support kit, spells that hit weaknesses that aren't common to find, as well as affect statuses that may or may not have niche use, and usually a solid nuke that can hold up in endgame (grand delta, shockwave pulsar, annihilation, etc.) This is the only constant across all the games, and the only thing FFXIV needed to have aspired to. Heck, let's even throw the argument a bone and say that FF5 and FF7 Blue Magic is indeed the primary danger to game balance, well what about FF6, FFTA, FFTA2, FFX-2, FF Explorers, Bravely Default (Vampire), Bravely Default 2 (Catmancer), and a big one, FFXI? I count 8 examples of Blue Magic being a relatively nice, non-broken support kit compared to the two examples above.

Apologies if I'm coming across rather aggressive, I am just sick to death of this fallacious argument and I refuse to let Blue Mage's reputation be tarnished with outright lies.