The hate for limited jobs is unjustified

[Sindele]

I'm not used to Sindri having the correct take and being surrounded by terrible ones, but here we are. Fitting Blue Mage into the holy trinity paradigm requires stripping it of everything that makes Blue Mage iconic in pursuit of aesthetics alone. If you'd be happier with a regular rotation caster with "spell glamours" that has no discernible mechanical identity, then more power to you, but you like boring things and represent one of the reasons class complexity has gone down over the years.

They're never felt any more or less powerful than any other job I could play as.

Then you weren't taking full advantage of them. Any mainline game with an unlimited Blue Magic equivalent usually finds it somewhere near the top of the power rankings. FF5? Trades top spot with Chemist depending on version. FF7? E.Skill is generally considered the best materia. FF9? Quina is outright gamebreaking. X-2? Completely coked out and only really beaten because that game has a plethora of gamebreaking combos. Strago's just about the only mid one.

[Kemiko]

I'm not used to Sindri having the correct take and being surrounded by terrible ones, but here we are. Fitting Blue Mage into the holy trinity paradigm requires stripping it of everything that makes Blue Mage iconic in pursuit of aesthetics alone. If you'd be happier with a regular rotation caster with "spell glamours" that has no discernible mechanical identity, then more power to you, but you like boring things and represent one of the reasons class complexity has gone down over the years.



Then you weren't taking full advantage of them. Any mainline game with an unlimited Blue Magic equivalent usually finds it somewhere near the top of the power rankings. FF5? Trades top spot with Chemist depending on version. FF7? E.Skill is generally considered the best materia. FF9? Quina is outright gamebreaking. X-2? Completely coked out and only really beaten because that game has a plethora of gamebreaking combos. Strago's just about the only mid one.

I'll appreciate you to not put words into my mouth in order to try to make your points.

If in order for you to have your job fantasy for your combat job to subsequently miss out on most of the combat portion of the game, well congratulations, the current iteration is exactly for you. You have it. Good job. Relish in it.

But balanced doesn't have to be boring and I do not sign to Blue Mage's identity being "overpowered job". I'll not pretend as if anything XIV has put in place is an accurate representation of any of the jobs we're used to seeing over the course of the franchises history, but at least they were playable in the content we're given.

[Sindele]

I'll appreciate you to not put words into my mouth in order to try to make your points.

If in order for you to have your job fantasy for your combat job to subsequently miss out on most of the combat portion of the game, well congratulations, the current iteration is exactly for you. You have it. Good job. Relish in it.

But balanced doesn't have to be boring and I do not sign to Blue Mage's identity being "overpowered job". I'll not pretend as if anything XIV has put in place is an accurate representation of any of the jobs we're used to seeing over the course of the franchises history, but at least they were playable in the content we're given.

I did nothing of the sort in that post. That whole section is before the quote because it's not addressing you specifically.

That said, what you're saying now fits it: I don't have "a combat job", and that's exactly the point. I cycle through 6-8 combat jobs to do the mundane stuff depending on how I feel. I play Blue Mage when I want to do what Blue Mage does best - and that's considerably more than just the Carnivale. (Eureka and DDs would have been nice, though.)

No, balance doesn't have to be boring - but it would unquestionably and unequivocally be more boring than what we have now. I've got 19 jobs to run the balanced stuff with. There's only one job that does anything like what Blue Mage can do.

[Vyrerus]

Strago's just about the only mid one.

Incorrect.

While there are more powerful options for characters in FFVI, they don't come without a lot of leveling caveats, whereas Strago's Lore (Azure Lore if you will) comes in stronger than all other characters skill options relative to game progression with just his 3 starting spells.

His most powerful spell is tied to a World of Ruin sidequest that at most is locked behind just completing Owzer's House in WoR OR Veldt Cave (so one dungeon after Falcon acquisition, either way) if you let Shadow perish. This spell is basically a more MP efficient Ultima for all intents and purposes. It has slightly lower MP cost and spell power than Ultima, but easily reaches maximum damage before you can even acquire Ultima. This is maximum damage with his innate skills long before other characters can do maximum damage with their own innate skills.

Alternatively, his other most powerful spell is Step Mine (Traveler in later editions) which is a spell analogous to Quina's Frog Drop. Except it's tied to how many steps you've taken, and it's accessible within the World of Balance from early game enemies. You can get it right after getting him, and then spend like an hour or so in a town with Sprint Shoes on ramping it up until it is at max damage. Which is still faster than other means of acquiring maximum damage dealing attacks. And also used in minimum level runs since it doesn't rely on stats for its damage calc.


By comparison to other Blue Mages, Strago is a stand out in the category. Blue Mage in its inception appearance doesn't get to its game breaking spells until like, Karnak Castle escape, which is like half a dozen dungeons away from the Wind Crystal shard acquisition.

Gau is another great and comparable/arguably better Blue Mage than Strago, even having access to spells that cast with the Lore animation but Strago cannot learn. But he gets bogged down by how long it can take you to run into enemies on The Veldt, and that's if you didn't miss their encounters.

Enemy Skill materia is great, but it's not a character.

If it weren't for that one artist that drew the funny comic with Quistis, I'd forget she was a Blue Mage 90% of the time.

Quina comes in swinging hard, because you can get most all of her incredible spells right after recruiting her, particularly if you get her early. But I mean, this is mostly Limit Glove, which has that pesky needs to be at 1 HP stipulation. She shines harder in people's minds from being from a more recent game, but also from the fact that Strago is in a game where every character has to compete with Esper granted magic, so it's not uncommon for you to already have a few characters with magical prowess comparable or better than Strago's starting spells.

So going back to VI, with Esper Magic and making sure to get that Magic Power+ on level up from specific Espers (Maduin, Cait Sith, Zoneseek, and Tritoch) any character can get insane in the membrane magical damage, making Strago seem less special, but he can do that too and it also boosts the powers of his unique Lore spells. In addition he has gear access others don't and can get close to the same amount of Magic Power+ from gear that Terra/Celes/Relm get. Then there's always that funky layer that all Blue Magic has where he gets spells that do things that standard magic doesn't. Like he gets the Aero spell which is basically like a tier 3 on all enemies wind spell.