How Blue Mage Could Exist in FFXIV

[Kazrah]

So this is not one of those "hey, I want this job in the game" kinds of threads. This is an attempt to adequately explain how a job like Blue Mage could work in this game when the traditional core concept of the job simply would not work in the sense that it has been understood from previous games in the Final Fantasy series through the ORMOA method that I have posted in these forums some time ago.

Fair warning that this is a LOT of text and there will not be a TL;DR version, so for those who do intend to go through all of it, 1) thank you, and 2) grab some snacks, because some of the sections here are a lot longer than the others. I have also put it in spoiler text for some level of convenience.

Origin

So the Origin here refers to the story components of the job within the game in the forms of background lore and the story told through the job questline. Without this component, the job would have no reason to exist within the confines of the game world, thus having no purpose for developers to its creation. The "short" story presented here provides a possible means of establishing Blue Mage into storylines already established into the game:

A Curious Explorer

A woman in Thavnairian garb (could be any race, but let’s just say Hyur for now) is found wandering around a city (could be a new one, could be one already present in the game) by the hero. The woman proceeds to ask the hero multiple questions about Eorzea and states that she wishes to explore the continent in the hopes of finding her father, using an old journal to retrace his steps. With the agreement by the hero to assist the woman, she gives the hero what she claims was the two other things her father left her upon his disappearance: a soul crystal and a saber. Upon completing this initial questline, the player will attain the Learn skill (which will be explained in the Mechanics section). This would also be the first time where a woman uses a line repeated in every quest that she claimed to have gotten from her father: “not a sight left unseen, not a place left unknown, not a lesson left unlearned”.

Gullible Travels

Each quest would follow a fairly simple pattern at least in regard to story. It would start with the woman pointing out something in the journal and requesting to go to whatever destination is stated on that page. Once the destination has been reached, there might be some dialogue involving the woman citing from the journal page, maybe scribbling down some notes of her own, and encountering a local monster (possibly not in that order for every quest). After defeating the monster, there would be a cutscene that starts with the monster using a particular skill against the hero where the hero would picture the skill in their mind and use that same skill against the monster, either slaying it or causing it to flee (depending on both the monster and the skill used). Any major story-based developments would be after all of this in the form of finding some sort of clue left by the woman’s father. At the very end of every quest though, the player is rewarded the skill to use for their own.

Journey's End

The end of the first major storyline for Blue Mage would be the marked by the final location listed in the journal, identified as “Journey’s End”. This quest would lead to a tavern on the side of a cliff (or someplace otherwise unreachable without unusual traversing), where the hero is introduced to the woman’s father, who would explain that he left the journal in the hopes that his daughter would ultimately find him. He also explains that the Journey’s End is a tavern recognized as a safe haven among great explorers of all walks of life, adding “and they’d HAVE to be to find a place like this”.

The father also elaborates on the history behind “the mages of the blue”, about how it started with five explorers who had set their goal of exploring and learning all they could of the world under one motto: “not a sight left unseen, not a place left unknown, not a lesson left unlearned”. When asked what “the blue” is, he points to a globe, saying that the original five explorers were all islanders and “when you live on an island, the world beyond looks blue”, and the term stuck ever since. Lastly, he explains that Blue Mages draw power not from monsters, but from their own experiences, and that learning from those experiences is what gives power to techniques learned from monsters previously fought.

The Initiation

The expansion questline (quests set for the highest 10-level range of the job release) would involve an initiation of sorts into the Blue Mage’s guild, where each quest would send the hero off to a site from a past civilization and learning not just of the aspects of the area, but also of one of the five explorers mentioned in the father’s story of the founding of the guild. These quests will also test the player’s knowledge of various locations in the game along with known attributes associated with those places.

In Search of More

Any questlines from expansions made after the release of Blue Mage would be as the role of the explorer, either following in the footsteps of some explorer of great renown or having the hero chart the path themselves as a member of the Blue Mage guild.

Role

The role for this example of Blue Mage has been classified as a support-type melee damage dealer.

Basically this means three things. First, it’s a DPS (that’s a given). Second, it’s a melee DPS (slightly more obvious). Third is that it’s “support-type” DPS, which means it will have slightly more focus on utility compared to “assault-type” DPS jobs which have only one or two skills built around raid utility.

Mechanics

This unfortunately is the part where I will wind up both disappointing and aggravating about 99.4% of all of those diehard FFXI fans who want this game to be more like that one: as it has been previously mentioned, Blue Mage as you know it simply cannot and will not work in the same way that it does in XI. Eorzea is not Vana’diel, XI does not equal XIV. The End.

And now that a good portion of those XI fans have either gotten off this thread or are busy making an angry response, let us go then into the details behind how this job would work in FFXIV.

Learn (2.0)

Learn has always been a hallmark of Blue Mage ever since its inception, and not having it is sort of like having a Dragoon with Jump or a Red Mage without Doublecast; it would just feel weird. That’s why I felt that part of the Learn skill would be integrated into the questlines while offering a skill that bears some level of meaningful use as a player. The first thought was trying to make it where it could enable the Blue Mage to briefly use a particular skill from a mob, but that would require knowing where the limit is to it, what mobs have what effects, what mobs can and can’t you use this skill on….tons and tons of muck too overly complicated for both the players mechanically and the developers technically just for one single job (#SMNproblems). After that was the idea of using Learn on specific mobs and getting a skill from them, but that would incur more or less of the same issues as the first idea.

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 overall goal for this skill would be a slow boost for single-target damage much like the average boss enrage mechanics.

Beast Skills

For beast skills, all of them will be gained through the job storyline (after Learn) through the means stated in the Origin section. Many of them will have cast times and various cooldown ranges, but all of them will have MP costs attached to them. This will be the source of periodic damage as well as bigger hits, while the main damage source will be predominately from weapon combos.

Everything Else

Weapon skills and other possible basic cooldowns will be gained through the basic leveling process. The attack style would be intended to be more swashbuckler-themed, leaving it with not exactly Ninja speed, yet not as slow or clunky as Dragoon either. All weapon attack skills will be on the global and cost TP with one exception being an MP restoration ability on a somewhat lengthy cooldown.

Outfitting

Outfitting is simply the gear and core stat preference. As Blue Mage is a melee DPS rather than a typical caster, it will be in armor more appropriate to melee rather than to casters. Because the combat style mentioned in the Mechanics section is still a fairly light style, Scouting gear (a.k.a. Ninja gear), or Dexterity-based armor, would be most ideal in this circumstance.

Any relic armor associated with the job would still look more on the extravagant side, with the most conservative of these sets being the blue mage appearance of the FFTA series (go look it up if you need to).

The weapon of choice for Blue Mage would be one considerably well associated with the job: the saber. A single, light blade with a bit of a curve, possibly with higher levels of elegant design to it such as jewels in the blade or pommel guard.
As the saber weapon type could also include cutlasses and various other blades of that sort of curvature in terms of appearances, any relic weapon could be inspired by a multitude of stories ranging from various pirate legends to 1001 Arabian Nights.

Abilities

First off, neither the abilities nor their values are set in stone. This list of abilities is to mainly provide some idea as to the basic combat functions of Blue Mage and getting an idea of how it would fight. This is also not set up as a complete list of abilities and traits as to not convolute or confuse anyone reading it and trying to bounce back and forth attempting to link skill relations. Lastly, TP and MP costs have been omitted for now, but one asterisk (“ * “) means there is a TP cost, while two (“ ** “) is MP cost.

For melee combos, these do not currently have names, but only relative potencies and effects with the objective of providing personal buffing as well as providing whichever debuff would be necessary. Again, the goal here is to provide a simplified rotational setup, and any of this could be altered as necessary (also because I didn’t feel like going into too much detail with it anyway).

*Basic Attack Combo: 170 – 230 – 280

*Buff/Debuff Combo 1:

150 – 200, increase magic damage by 15% (21 sec) – 260, reduce target’s magic resist by 10% (24 sec)

*Buff/Debuff Combo 2:

150 - 200, increase magic damage by 15% (21 sec) - 270, reduce target’s slash resist by 10% (24 sec)

The rest of the skills and abilities will have their names and attributes listed under this order: potency, periodic potency (“X periodic”), effect duration, range (if it is not a melee skill), radius (if it is an AoE effect), cast time (only if there is a cast time involved), and recast time. Any secondary effects and their durations (if applicable) will be listed afterward along with a description as necessary for cooldown effects. Visual descriptions will be noted for some skills and abilities (because I am HORRIBLE at art).

*Dervish Slash: 120, 5y radius, 2.5 sec recast

Aspir Blade: 200, 90 sec recast. Restores 50% MP.

Learn: 30 sec duration, 10 sec recast. Increases the target’s damage taken by the caster by 5%. Stacks up to three times. If this skill is applied to a different target, any applications on the previous target will be removed.

**Headbutt: 170, 45 sec recast. Stuns the target for 5 seconds. Visual: faint image of a Spriggan performing a leaping headbutt as the Blue Mage mimics the motion.

**Bad Breath: 40 periodic, 30 sec duration, 10y range, 10 radius, 1.5 sec cast time, 2.5 sec recast. Deals periodic unaspected damage in a fan-shaped pattern. Visual: faint image of a Malboro performing its Bad Breath attack while the Blue Mage performs the attack, appearing as if they were forcibly yelling.

**Goblin Punch: 400, 2.5 sec cast time, 45 sec recast. Deals unaspected damage. Visual: faint image of a larger Goblin leaning back on its right foot and spinning its right arm wildly for the cast and then throwing the punch for the attack, with the Blue Mage mimicking the motions.

**Drain Touch: 50, 25 periodic, 18 sec duration, 1.5 sec cast time, 30 sec recast. Deals unaspected damage to the target. Heals the caster for the damage dealt. Visual: faint image of a Zombie raising their arms and throwing them down on the target, with the Blue Mage mimicking the motions.

Cocoon: 20 sec duration, 180 sec recast. Places a reflective barrier on the target party member, reducing all physical damage taken by the target by 20%. Each time an enemy attacks the target, the enemy takes damage with a potency of 40. Visual: the Blue Mage reaches out to the target as a faint image of a Silkworm shoots a spray of silk onto the target that briefly forms into a white translucent bubble before disappearing.

**White Wind: 700, 15y radius, 3 sec cast time, 120 sec recast. Heals all allies in range. Visual: faint image of a Sylph appearing over the head of the Blue Mage, who would both appear to cast the same spell. The spell effect is a faint, white rush of air before disappearing along with the Sylph image.

**Sandstorm: 100, 40 periodic, 18 sec duration, 8y radius, 2.5 sec cast. Deals earth damage to all enemies in range. Visual: faint image of an Antlion raising its head up while the Blue Mage raises their saber at the end of the cast, creating a small, light brown vortex of sand to briefly appear.

Quick Study: 180 sec cooldown. Apply three applications of Learn to the target.

Dragon Force: 20y radius, 30 sec duration, 720 sec recast. Increases the damage of all party members by 25%. Upon use, all party members affected by this skill are afflicted with Fatigue, which prevents the target from being affected by Dragon Force until they leave combat. Visual: faint image of a Dragon roaring.

LIMIT BREAK: This would simply be a much larger Blue Mage attack through the faint image of a representative beast for that attack. There are probably more suitable examples, but for now, the example I have provided is Twister from naga-type mobs in FFTA.

LIMIT BREAK – Twister: Melee Limit Break. Casting visual: large faint image of a Naga casting a spell as the Blue Mage rears their saber around their left shoulder as winds begin to gather around it. Attack visual: the Naga image casts its spell with its arms stretched toward the target as the Blue Mage slashes in a wide arc, creating a massive tornado around the target.