Would Blue Mage make a good tank?

[Dualgunner]

From what I have come to understand, not being a major Final Fantasy buff myself, the Blue Mage is a class that learns abilities from their enemies and uses them against them.

With that said, if Blue Mage were a tank it feels like they'd be a heavily vengeance-based tank; a lot of abilities that reflect damage like WAR's "Vengeance," but also an ability that maybe works like Jutsu where the command changes based maybe on whether or not the Blue Mage has been hit by a magic or physical, elemental or holy/darkness attack.

It would also be a mage tank, which I also think would be cool.

But I am no game designer, I'm just spitballing ideas ^w^

[Naraku_Diabolos]

It screams DPS. However, BLU could take any given roles. Whether healing, pseudo-tanking, and damage dealing. I think it will be a DPS caster. If that's it, it could still learn abilities. However following the rules from FFXI, you can equip a limited number of spells/attacks at a time. I thought if that were to happen, certain spells/attacks could make it a tank, healer, or DPS when equipped. So it could literally be anything based on what it has equipped. Then again, people will be saying they only want certain sets for endgame...and that's a whole can of worms.

[Dyvid]

Honestly it seems like a job that could do all three roles depending on skills set.

[MiniPrinny]

As far as traditional means of learning Blue Magic, which is getting hit by the ability in question... yes. However, their previous incarnations have lacked in tanking abilities to base the Job on. The two recurring defensive spells Blue Mage has gotten are Mighty Guard and Frog Song. Mighty Guard is taken by the second level tank limit break, while Frog Song would be essentially an interesting looking stun in all likelihood. From the one-off list of abilities...

Flash from FFV: Inflicts Blind (someone has this)
Vampire from FFV: Steals HP (sounds familiar)
Reflect??? from FFVI: Inflicts blind, silence, and slow on all enemies with the reflect status
Force Field from FFVI: Random elemental immunity all allies and enemies
Night from FFIX: Inflicts sleep on all enemies and allies
Absorb from FFX-2: Steals HP (again?!) and MP
Hastebreak from FFTA: Inflicts slow and stop on a single target
Roar from FFTA2: Removals all positive effects on the field (allies and enemies)
Sandstorm from FFTA2: AoE Blind and damage
Eerie Sound Wave from FFTA2: One-Ilm Punch that does no damage

I'm not going to cover Final Fantasy XI's spell list because it is massive, bloated, and full of things we've never seen before or since.

[Nalien]

Given how Blue Magic traditionally worked, I think Tank is the best role for Blue Mage... They had to get hit by attacks to learn them, that has Tank written all over it.

Not sure how they'd actually work Blue Magic, though... Have the initial quest similar to Heavensward Jobs? So they can just go "You're already Lv50, you've been hit by plenty of attacks already, so you already know these basic Blue Magic spells", then have Job quests work on specific spells to replicate the old learning style of Blue Magic? Perhaps slap Blue Mage with no Cross-Class skills, and instead put Blue Magic in there?

I think it would make a really interesting Tank though... Would be nice to have a more mage based Tank, rather than the heavy armor ones... This game has a real problem with standardizing everything though... Tank gear is VIT/STR, where as something like Blue Mage should have VIT/INT gear, guess they made an odd exception with Ninja though. Honestly, if Dark Knight can be a Tank, then there's no reason Blue Mage can't be... No way we're getting the same overpowered mess XI got, it could fill any role, but it absolutely wont...

[Dualgunner]

Flash from FFV: Inflicts Blind (someone has this)
Vampire from FFV: Steals HP (sounds familiar)
Reflect??? from FFVI: Inflicts blind, silence, and slow on all enemies with the reflect status
Force Field from FFVI: Random elemental immunity all allies and enemies
Night from FFIX: Inflicts sleep on all enemies and allies
Absorb from FFX-2: Steals HP (again?!) and MP
Hastebreak from FFTA: Inflicts slow and stop on a single target
Roar from FFTA2: Removals all positive effects on the field (allies and enemies)
Sandstorm from FFTA2: AoE Blind and damage
Eerie Sound Wave from FFTA2: One-Ilm Punch that does no damage

Those all sound like they'd be intriguing abilities to play around with, actually. I also like the idea of a lot of skills you learn through the quest being skills you learn by getting your stuffing ripped out by monsters in the quest, but would a single-use skill that is based on the attack you just got hit by be a good ability for a tank?

[Iagainsti]

Blu mage made a great tank in FFXI, but that system would not work properly the way ability system is designed in FFXIV. It'd be cool to see them in a true support role, with a separate melee and range combo, and nice aoe regen or mitigation CD that shares a CD with an good aoe damage increase for party members that they could alternate

[Rhaja]

BLU would be an amazing tank. It's base combo's could be based off Whip, claw, or bite attacks, and all abilities would reflect current abilities used by monsters in the game. Couerl for stun, bomb for aoe, ranged pull could come from the sahagin spit, give them a ranged grab from the toads. Take the turtle/dragon boss from Stone Vigil HM when it reflects attacks while it's red; that could be a fun mixture of vengence and wildfire. Compile a bunch of damge and then aoe unleash. Sanguine bite and regenerating in its own pool of poison(last boss of Brayflox) could be forms of sustain. Any elemental spike spell that could work like the MNK's fist.


There's options to make it an awesome tank, but the same could be said for a DPS spot. There's no way we would be out collecting monster abilities, but that can be easily emulated in class quest. While getting the abilities was a cool part of single player FF games, the concept of also becoming a monster to fight monsters is a side of BLU this game can play with. That and... we could have exploding lalafells >__>

[Gunspec]

Blue Mage should just be an optional cross class skill line that existing classes could complement their play styles with. Learn Blue Magic from quests, bosses, open world enemies, and main story. Have your progress in learning Blue Magic tracked as an achievement, and unlock Blue Mage glamour as a reward for learning new abilities. It would be the perfect way to expand the cross class system which has been completely neglected since the hotfixes in early 2.X.

Forcing monster abilities into a single trinity role would be wasting the concept of blue magic. But maybe that's just my opinion as a veteran of the PSX Final Fantasy games where blue magic merely complemented a character's combat role rather than served as the full range of it.

[Cidel]

I've seen a few suggestions here and there about BLU being designed to fill all roles of the trinity in XIV, and personally, I'd like to think it could work.

(potentially crazy concept inc.)

For one, the Blue mage soulstone could also prompt you to choose which role you'll be playing as (and you could store more than 1 role in the Gear Sets). An FC member gave me the idea that Piety (of all things) could be BLU's "main stat" that adds to/changes to the main stat most important to jobs in their respective part of the trinity (tank=VIT, healer=MND, DPS=something else). DPS Blue mages would be using spells that mostly cost TP, healer Blue mages would be using MP almost exclusively, and tank Blue mages could have a mix of both, perhaps, as I've illustrated

(Yes, I've went and illustrated these ideas)


(I used a pentagram as a concept, don't get hung up on it <,<)

But anyway, the spells you can "use" (not learn, you would learn them all), are dependent on what role you are currently filling in the trinity. DPS spells could naturally be mostly damage/buff spells with some debuffs thrown in. Healing spells would be mostly buffing and various healing spells. Tank spells would be things that may just tack on enmity and buffing abilities, with some other things thrown in as necessary. Another image illustrating what I mean:



All 9 spells in the example are "learned" via quests (which is the only way I see the devs doing job abilities/spells at this point), but only a third are available to any respective role in the trinity, maybe with a few exceptions that would benefit all three.

And as I said about learning the spells, as much as I would find it cool to go out on your own and learn spells any which way like most traditional Blue mages, in XIV I seriously doubt the devs would opt for a system that would allow players absolute freedom (Yoshi said as much in an old interview), so questlines like everything else thus far is likely. I think it would be cool to have 3 separate (but linked) NPCs that represent the role trinity.

(Again, just whipped up a concept this afternoon)


(I dunno, feel like the Au Ra could use some NPC love in the future)- I think it would be cool to have 3 NPCs (I dunno, make them siblings or something) that collectively give you your job quests every so many levels. Pending which role in the trinity you are currently playing, one of the NPCs will accompany you to collect that quest's spells. Tank BLUs would get paired with the DPS NPC, healer BLUs get paired with the tank NPC, and DPS BLUs would be paired with the healer NPC (some quests may end up with more than 1, or none). Each normal job quest could have you learning a spell for each of the trinity- Blue mages end up learning a wide variety of spells (even if they can't use them all at once/any combination they want).

But anyway, that's just me putting together a conglomerate of ideas I've seen that I liked that I don't think is a giant curveball to design for the devs...