The hate for limited jobs is unjustified

[tearagion]

They get hate because it's lazy. BLU's over-powered spells are actually pretty low in number, aren't what people usually think of as iconic blue mage abilities (which as an aside: I think is a stupid notion, the appeal is using the abilities that monsters use, not using the same abilities another blue mage did a decade ago), and could be adjusted to fit with the rest of the cast anyway. I'm way too lazy to exhaustively list what I think is good from the spellbook so instead I'm going to just go off of the spells used in the usual DPS raiding spellsets.

Spells that don't break the game: Song of Torment, Bristle, Moon Flute*, Feather Rain, Shockstrike, Sonic Boom, Whistle, Angel Whisper, Surpanakha, J Kick, Triple Trident, Tingle, Cold Fog**, The Rose of Destruction, Matra Magic, Phantom Flurry, Nightbloom, Winged Reprobation, Sea Shanty***, Being Mortal, Breath of Magic and Mortal Flame****.
*Not actually particularly broken just restrictive and kind of boring. Even normal BLU is better off with it being adjusted IMO.
**Strong for BLU, but not actually that strong compared to other casters' movement options and ppgcd.
***only the extra weather effect warps this skill
****Easily calculated into the pps of the job, only an issue in Ultimates where they would need to be reapplied a number of times.

Spells that are just broken, no argument: Diamondback, and White Wind.

Broken but could just have less access and be balanced: Off-guard, Candy Cane, and Magic Hammer.

Trait-tier, but technically very strong: Aetherial Mimicry

Spells that are too situational: Revenge Blast, Wild Rage, Final Sting.


The biggest sore thumb is probably the variety of Death or %HP effects BLU has. These can just be removed lol people only use Ultravibration and Doom now anyway. Missile also taken in groups on occasion (for example t13).

Suddenly it seems very easy for there to be an unlimited version of BLU implemented. One that people already play and enjoy. We will soon have jobs that require you to have completed ~3 expansions and a base game of content to access, so I don't think filling out a spellbook is a big ask. Even if it was just swap the spells limited BLU uses for a new set you just unlock as you level and complete job quests. There are a great many monster and boss spells yet unused that could fill such a purpose.

tldr: people hate it because you only get to seriously play the job you like for something like a month maybe every 3 years, it's perpetually 10 levels behind, and, at least for BLU, there's an obvious solution.

[Colt47]

Blue Mage is just awsome. I haven't really touched it but I've seen people use it for solo content, along with just running around and doing fate farming for relics back in shadowbringers. However, I doubt it is the skills themselves that are a problem as much as how someone goes about getting new abilities for the job. It's the only job where someone has to go to a specific instance and see an attack to learn it. If they made the job capable of doing end game content in the current tier, as well as unlocked the ability to advance in level and do the MSQ using it, the sheer variance in how one players experience would be over another would be staggering.

To put it bluntly, either someone would be brokenly good, or they'd be absolutely awful and would be getting dragged around all the time. Like thinking on how I'd even try to do this...

1) There would have to be quests setup that require a blue mage to go do some dungeon until they learn a specific skill. Thus there would be required skills and optional skills. The blue mage could only advance in level if they get the required skill.

2) A lot of skills would have to be on the same cooldowns depending on the tier of the skill. So a BLU would have to choose which skills are active during an encounter for each tier of skill they know. This prevents the need for having to nerf off-guard, candy cane, and magic hammer for example.

3) The job would be a great candidate as a healer or DPS job, but they'd have to do something like a double job stone since the only way the game knows if someone is a healer or dps is by the job stone they have. So they'd have to divide the skills between two job stones, but also let the class have the ability to learn any of the spells regardless of the job stone. It's a situation that is worse than the scholar / summoner scenario.

Then the final hard part is how to deal with new skills or what happens when one of the skills is just situationally superior in an EX that isn't a required skill for leveling up. Imagine in PF "BLU allowed but only if they know [Diamondback]" or "BLU allowed but need [Angel Whisper]". Since they removed the Steps of Faith trial the only way to get Diamondback is to do Stone Vigil hard mode, so what happens if a skill happens to exist in old content that gets altered and now that skill can't be obtained unless they were lucky and caught it in some MSQ quest? These are just sort of things that are coming to mind.

[ForsakenRoe]

They COULD turn Blue Mage into a regular Job, but would you want a simplified BLM? Because that's what it would be.

I linked a post which gave an example of a gameplay that is not just 'simplified BLM'. Unless you consider RDM to be 'simplified BLM', since it uses a fire spell like BLM does? At which point, couldn't we just say every job is 'simplified X'?

yea i just dont agree here, tell me why you think it should be ok for
* people who slaved on ultimates for nothing more than the experience just watch as blu mages go in there and diamond back everything.. it annoyed me watching it for shiva and im sure itl upset ultimate raiders. missunderstandably. ultimate is NOT for the reward, its for the experience. the reward is just the incentive to endure it, but after you clear its the eperience that stays with you. - the words of a friend of mine who is a penta legend

I don't think you'll get far trying to Diamondback things in Ultimates. You'd die to Twisters, die to Heavensfall Trio, Tenstrike Trio, Blackfire Trio, Quickmarch Trio, and that's just UCOB. I've done ultimates, I would not mind BLU being in the party, I don't think it'd 'ruin the experience' or whatever. Then again, the way I'd have done BLU would have been very different to what we see now. The post I linked was more like 'damage control' to salvage a terrible design we're stuck with

You mention E8S, Light Rampant. Okay, you can DB through it. Now, have you thought about the fact that this only works because you're ALL BLUs? How are you planning to DB through LR, when you're the only one of the 8 in the party who can do so? In fact, locking yourself in place for 10s to 'DB through Light Rampant' guarantees the death of the other 7 players?

as for how it should be designed.. it literally cannot work. and you dont get that. they cannot go around deciding what blu spells should be in it, if any. the whole point of the job is for you to customize it. if they go adding there own, theyve taken away everything that might have attracted you to it. i guarentee if they made blu unlimited people would hate it and unsub

It literally could work, and you don't get that. The whole point of the job is to customize it? What could be more 'customization friendly' than being able to make your spell VFXs match your glamour, without having to worry about 'oh I wanted to have a fire themed BLU, but Fire Angon is 10p less than Sonic Boom so I can't without sacrificing damage potential'?

I guarantee if they do something like what I linked to, to make BLU unlimited, people would love it, there would not be unsubs in remotely the numbers you are doomsaying. I'd bet real money on it. I have no idea what was going through their minds back in SB when they thought limited jobs would be a good idea, and doubly so with BST given the divisiveness of BLU thus far

Issue with making them a real job is that you will have to take away the one thing that set them apart from other Jobs in FFV/FFXI. BLU will not learn spells from monsters (only from Job quests and then eventually from just levelling up. Spells will be cycled out per expansion)

You learn spells from totems now, so what's the problem? Besides, as I posted earlier, the 'learn method' on BLU is very inconsistent. 'Learn enemy skills' is the identity, and that's possible with a full version of BLU. If 'learning spells from totems' is fine now, then 'learn basic version of spell from totem unlocked at certain level bracket, with spell-glamours for that spell out in the world to hunt down and unlock' should be fine too

Then the final hard part is how to deal with new skills or what happens when one of the skills is just situationally superior in an EX that isn't a required skill for leveling up. Imagine in PF "BLU allowed but only if they know [Diamondback]" or "BLU allowed but need [Angel Whisper]". Since they removed the Steps of Faith trial the only way to get Diamondback is to do Stone Vigil hard mode, so what happens if a skill happens to exist in old content that gets altered and now that skill can't be obtained unless they were lucky and caught it in some MSQ quest? These are just sort of things that are coming to mind.

As above, you have a way to get the spell easily (eg, unlock access to a totem at a certain level, as we do with Breath of Magic or Transfusion or whatever currently), and then have Diamondback or Angel Whisper or whatever as the 'optional unlockable spell glamours' for those spells. If someone wants to just level the class and raid, they have the basic VFX for each spell but they have the kit they need to do the content. If they want to get further invested in the job, they can partake in the optional collectathon content and fill out the spellbook to unlock all the appearances. It'd be bonus side-content for the job, like how Performance is side content for BRD (requires BRD level 30 to unlock)

Unless we want to say BRD should be limited, due to Performance mode too?

[Colt47]

For BLU to maintain its identity, the spells it learns can't just be glamours over some existing skill. While it's true that some skills might mechanically be superior to others, the majority of what makes BLU unique is the nature and uniqueness of each of the skills themselves. So skills would have to be tiered and most likely, a lot of skills might not even be useful. Not to mention balancing skills would involve having to go from the strongest and down, the jobs ability to use skills in any configuration would be reduced to specifically slots, and every blu mage would become the same in the end as optimization from savage players would spell the death of any skill even marginally less effective, because 0.1% less damage matters to these people more than most realize. These are guys who get touchy from someone not doing a low damage precast that makes almost no difference in the outcome of a fight and scream something is broken if it out classes all the other dps by any measure.

Savage and ultimate break the game of Final Fantasy XIV and are not really good for the game, mostly because of the constant comparison to others acting as a driving force that pigeonholes decision making. If the correct answer is the one that has the most damage then there is no alternative which kills what the BLU is supposed to be about.

[tearagion]

oh yeah, whoops, the raider boogiemen who ruin everything are definitely keeping BLU in the shed not CBU3. pack it up everyone

[mallleable]

Umm actually, BLU is a 2 min job... :nerd_emoji:

It just doesn't feel like one coz it's so weird, and flexible.

Anyway limited jobs rule, and I'm looking forward to BST!

[RitsukoSonoda]

Maybe they should have called it a "Non-Meta" job instead of limited since the primary thing is that it's not locked into a specific role like normal jobs. As for those saying SE could have just nerfed it to make it like normal jobs, I want them to take a look at RDM which they did do this to because when you look at RDM in other FF games it's also a job that can fill just about every role in a party at any given moment due to the amount of variety and versatility of tools available to it causing it often to be regarded as a jack of all trades but master of none. They gutted the job to relegate it to being strictly a DPS caster that rarely hits things with a sword making it a hollow shell of what it was in previous games.

I do have a couple gripes about the limited job implementation however but they're fairly minor IMO.

One is that they should at least be able to freely queue content that doesn't utilize a party role composition by default. This would be things like deep dungeons, exploratory zones, those variant dungeons, and MSQ solo duties.

The second is having it lag 10 levels behind. I'd prefer it have the same level cap as all other jobs simply so I don't have to keep a full set of lower level gear just for it.

The third with BLU is I feel like they wasted an opportunity with the weapon slot. BLU didn't need a massive catalogue of weapons like other jobs. However they should have at least made craft able sticks using materials/drops from trial/raid bosses that boosted specific elements, spell types, spells, etc. based on which boss it came from.

[Naple]

I've literally never heard anywhere of people talking bad about the limited jobs.
Except here because it's some echo chamber of negative comments.

[tearagion]

Maybe they should have called it a "Non-Meta" job instead of limited since the primary thing is that it's not locked into a specific role like normal jobs. As for those saying SE could have just nerfed it to make it like normal jobs, I want them to take a look at RDM which they did do this to because when you look at RDM in other FF games it's also a job that can fill just about every role in a party at any given moment due to the amount of variety and versatility of tools available to it causing it often to be regarded as a jack of all trades but master of none. They gutted the job to relegate it to being strictly a DPS caster that rarely hits things with a sword making it a hollow shell of what it was in previous games.

nobody reasonable is saying that they should delete the limited side of BLU (or at least I'm not. I've had, and will have I'm sure, a lot of fun with it) just that from a player perspective it doesn't seem particularly difficult in the slightest to just have a locked spellset you can opt into in order to be able to play the rest of the game with the rest of the jobs.

[Moomba33]

Blue Mage is my favourite job in the FF series. It broke my heart that SE made it a mini game in XIV instead of a full job.
I hate limited jobs because I want a Blue Mage I can main and play through the MSQ with.

To me the heart of blue is using enemy abilities. The learning method isn't important. The specific skills aren't essential. I would happily trade away "OP" stuff for being able to run all content in the game as blu.