How Blue Mage Could Exist in FFXIV

[Radacci]

ok first of all i like your idea simply because you realize BLU wouldn't normally work, in XIV; there seem to be sooo many people who can't understand this.
secondly as talraen said, the number of skills you'd get is so limited, it's next to pointless.

The big problem with BLU in FFXIV is that the game just doesn't support the huge number of abilities a BLU would be expected to learn. Even if every ability is learned from a monster, it would pale in comparison to the total from FFXI (which everyone seems to use as the gospel of blue mages). More succinctly, given the way things have been going, blue mages would gain abilities from a whopping five (5) monsters per expansion, at maximum.

I think it's safe to say that, while this is certainly possible, and your outline does a pretty good job of making it work and keeping the flavor of BLU, it's still going to disappoint a lot of people. In my view, it's almost not worth adding BLU to XIV because it can't help but disappoint people.

However, recently I've been thinking about this and I have a counter-proposal for how BLU could work. I won't go into nearly as much depth, as I've only really thought about his conceptually, but the end result is that this BLU would be able to use abilities from every single monster in the game - temporarily.

The idea here is going to be that you learn an ability from a monster in some fashion, and can stock those abilities similar to Astrologian cards. So you can use it immediately, save it for later, or maybe get some kind of buff based on what it is. Historically, blue mages in Final Fantasy games learn abilities by either seeing them or getting hit by them, though there are exceptions (Kimahri uses Lancet to just learn them, Quistis uses items, etc.). I could see a system where killing a monster gives you an ability, but that ends up being troublesome for boss fights.

Therefore, BLU is a tank. This is a class that's all about getting hit with abilities, and tanks are the only role that actively do that. That said, even tanks don't just sit in AOEs and take them to the face if they can avoid it. Therefore, I'd suggest BLU gets some ability to mitigate or even negate one ability, which they then learn temporarily and can use. (In some ways this ends up working more like Relm's sketch than a traditional blue mage.)

I'm no game designer, so I'll leave the details to the team that hypothetically would actually implement such a system. But this would let you learn and immediately use most basic monster abilities in the game. Obviously the effects won't be as dramatic, but you could at least copy the AOE shape in many cases, and there's plenty of room to make these abilities more interesting than just animations. Maybe (taking a page from FFXI) monster type does something, so maybe all vilekin abilities have some particular effect or optional use and all wavekin have a different one. I don't know.

Or maybe this is a terrible idea! It seems like it would be interesting to me, though.

I like the idea of having something between mudras and cards, though less random than cards....but there would/should be many combos, and it would be easy to mess up, if it's like mudras....so duno.
eh maybe you could use Gold Saucer cards, or something like that, and make a "skill deck" where each card has a monster skill; that would work for any role, not just tank. there's already a hefty list of cards you can get without really playing Triple Triad.
As for bosses, they mostly use tank busters, cleaves and auto attacks - it would feel awkward to learn tank busters or cleaves, as a tank; as well as getting a nerfed version as a dps.
As a non-tank, you could have an "empathy" skill, so you tether yourself to a tank, and learn skills when they get hit (like that pld skill)
but the biggest problem and reason it won't really work, is because if BLU can use that many skills, it would overshadow all other jobs; and they want all the jobs to have a similar amount of skills. May work in 4.0, when we get more skills, though.

[Reynhart]

secondly as talraen said, the number of skills you'd get is so limited, it's next to pointless.

Why ? Blue Mages usually don't have loads and loads of spells to chose from...The only time they did was in FFXI, but if it's reason enough for it to not work, you could say the same with just every caster job.

And I'm pretty sure BLU actually didn't use that many spells in the end, even in FFXI...

[Talraen]

There's a reason FFXI had more skills than the previous incarnations: because it's an MMO. Is anyone really going to be satisfied if out of all the new monsters in a given expansion, you get five (and more likely three or less) new abilities?

Besides, while blue mages have not traditionally been about getting huge numbers of spells, they've always been about having to hunt down your spells, and only having the ones available that you've found. If you just learn spells in quests like any other class, it's a blue mage in lore only.

[Duelle]

Learn (2.0)

The end result is a slow-stack, maintained debuff on a target increasing the damage taken from the Blue Mage by a set amount per application, stacking up to three times. The mentality behind this setup is that it shows a sign of a Blue Mage learning and understanding a target’s weak spots and would know how to hit them, but distractions such as another target or maybe an immediate need for evasive maneuvers would cause the Blue Mage to lose focus and have to study those weak points over again.

The issue I see here is that people who sometimes drop target by accident (like me) would get screwed pretty hard by this mechanic. I'd suggest a debuff that can only be active on one target, or a debuff that is applied when you use Blue Magic on the target. Something else to keep in mind is that encounters with long breaks would sort of screw over your BLU, specially if they follow patterns like Ravana.

There's a reason FFXI had more skills than the previous incarnations: because it's an MMO. Is anyone really going to be satisfied if out of all the new monsters in a given expansion, you get five (and more likely three or less) new abilities?

The reason BLU had so many spells was because part of the job's gimmick was that spell combos granted traits, which leaned to the "build your own class" concept. it didn't hit the levels of spell bloat because SE was also randomly adding things to other jobs, so it was just a matter of giving BLU analogues to those spells.

Besides, while blue mages have not traditionally been about getting huge numbers of spells, they've always been about having to hunt down your spells, and only having the ones available that you've found. If you just learn spells in quests like any other class, it's a blue mage in lore only.

Ability progression for FFXIV is what it is. You can accommodate aspects of BLU's growth to it, but you're not gonna get the full "hunt for your skills" thing.

Back when I wrote my suggestion (see my sig), I took this into account by having the player character learn several spells over the course of the unlock quest. Additional spells could be learned out in the world, but at least it was able to simulate skill learning as seen in prior FFs.

[LineageRazor]

The big problem with BLU in FFXIV is that the game just doesn't support the huge number of abilities a BLU would be expected to learn. Even if every ability is learned from a monster, it would pale in comparison to the total from FFXI (which everyone seems to use as the gospel of blue mages). More succinctly, given the way things have been going, blue mages would gain abilities from a whopping five (5) monsters per expansion, at maximum.

This is a problem with players, not with the job, and not an obstacle to putting BLU in the game. As enjoyable as BLU was in FFXI (it was pretty much my primary job in the last year or so I played the game), those hundreds of monster abilities were mostly useless. I see no reason why the devs should feel obligated to try to do the same with BLU in this game. Neither is this in any way "traditional" for Blue Mages - in almost every Final Fantasy game, the number of Blue Magic spells available to learn is far less than the number of Black or White magic spells.

No, if BLU is adapted for this game, it should have only a handful of monster abilities to draw upon; likely no more than ten or so - and all of them should be USEFUL, not filler as most of the spells in FFXI were.

secondly as talraen said, the number of skills you'd get is so limited, it's next to pointless.

I don't see why. If BLU has as many monster skills as BLM has spells, why would it be pointless?

[Remedi]

Can see BLU working as a tank personally, with:
mighty guard as the sentinel, shadow shield, vengeance equivalent

white wind as a heal of sort that might or might not work as it works usually ( heal power = to current health number)

Lifebreak (sometimes called: ????) an attack that does increased dmg as your health is lowered

The list can go on but I would ofc remove from the list all the aero-line skills because they are WHM skills at least till they show what RDM will do

[Reynhart]

Besides, while blue mages have not traditionally been about getting huge numbers of spells, they've always been about having to hunt down your spells, and only having the ones available that you've found. If you just learn spells in quests like any other class, it's a blue mage in lore only.

Ninja have traditionally been about freely equiping two weapons at once. In FFXIV, they just equip a specific weapon which happens to be a pair of daggers (Like monk equip a pair of cesti). Does that make the XIV incarnation of Ninja a bad one ?

[Talraen]

Ninja have traditionally been about freely equiping two weapons at once. In FFXIV, they just equip a specific weapon which happens to be a pair of daggers (Like monk equip a pair of cesti). Does that make the XIV incarnation of Ninja a bad one ?

There's a pretty big gap between "I can't decide to have two different weapons" and "the way I perform the core mechanic that differentiates my job from every other job works completely differently." Dual-wielding is hardly limited to ninjas, but only blue mages have ever learned spells from monsters.

[Reynhart]

There's a pretty big gap between "I can't decide to have two different weapons" and "the way I perform the core mechanic that differentiates my job from every other job works completely differently." Dual-wielding is hardly limited to ninjas, but only blue mages have ever learned spells from monsters.

If each quest puts you against specific monsters, you'd still learn your spells the proper way. Leveling would only offer additionnal skills.
I'd like to see the level 50 quest asking to be hit by Bad Breath from Miser's Mistress

And I imagine a skill that makes you and the party immune to the effect that your next spell can inflict. For example, you use your skill, cast a Terror-gaze, and suddently the party is immune to Dragon's Gaze for a set duration.

[MagiusNecros]

Ninja have traditionally been about freely equiping two weapons at once. In FFXIV, they just equip a specific weapon which happens to be a pair of daggers (Like monk equip a pair of cesti). Does that make the XIV incarnation of Ninja a bad one ?

Yep because they can't throw junk weapons for damage, Ninjutsu attacks are more limited since elemental weaknesses don't matter and were known for two weapon fighting which meant increased amount of attacks per turn, as well as the ability to completely dodge physical attacks. All nonexistent in XIV(change to Perfect Dodge is a crime) but available everywhere else.

And the Rogue AKA Thief? Can't even steal properly.

Does it make it bad? No. Just inferior. Which it is.