Job Idea: Blue Mage (Healer)

[Ilyrian]

I really, REALLY hated Quina.

Me too. Found Quina totally jarring in a game that already had a tenuous cast of characters.

The FFV Job, Gau, Relm (to a degree, anywho), Quistis, Kimahri, etc.

Strago

[Kurando]

I'm not big on the using fork to store aether business, I mean that's technically treading on SCH/SMM territory.

[Mimilu]

It's nice theorycrafting, but for any actual implementation it would need to be dialed way back. It would be too overpowered and it has far too much utility in comparison to the established healer classes. Plus SE has struggled to keep the three we have in balance. I'm rather glad they didn't add another in SB.

When designing the job I wanted it to feel like 2.0 SCH, being a more utility-heal job versus a burst-healer job like WHM. I do agree that the numbers need to be adjusted but seeing as this is a fan-made job, I can't really test to find out. >w>()
As for balancing the current healers, I personally think they're trying to balance around AST, who not only has cards but also has to fill in either the WHM or SCH slot. I think they need a fourth job so then they can decide if AST is going to be a main-or-secondary healer. I think they also need to push each healers identity more too.

Just throwing this out there: I fully expect Blue Mage will come as DPS. However, I also expect it will have a healing spell or 2. White Wind for example is a recurring Blue Magic spell.

Here you go:
Analyst (DPS) > Blue Mage (DPS) or Animist (Healer)
Vampire (DPS)

What?! All those culinary-based skills, and yet I see no Frypan?

Frypan was actual on my list of possible spells but I couldn't figure out what to do with it. X-D

I thought the whole concept of Blue Mage was learning and using monster abilities. O.o

Other than Quina, where'd the cooking concept come in? Was it some XI thing? (I've never played XI.)

Like Rinuko said, as much as I would like a learning system, I just don't see it happening in this game. It would be too much work for the devs to come up with abilities, fights, and a system to learn abilities, where most of them probably wouldn't even really matter or actually useful in the game.
As for the cooking concept, I went really heavy with the Quina version of a Blue Mage because I wanted to differentiate it from the other mages in game, especially Red Mage seeing as both usually are portrayed as mages-with-swords.
A lot of XI's Blue Mage did shine through though. They had a lot of quirky spells like Magic Fruit and Wild Oats.

I'm not big on the using fork to store aether business, I mean that's technically treading on SCH/SMM territory.

Every mage's weapon in the game does things like store or manipulate aether though, not just SCH and SMN. SCH and SMN's books are primary used to shape aether via geometry and formulas written inside of them.

[LittleSparrow]

Give this to me now.

[ChaoticCrimson]

Blue Mage would be pretty cool, if executed properly. I could see maybe having the job quests be based around hunting and defeating special monsters that can use the different abilities you can learn.

[Welsper59]

It's definitely an interesting approach to the job, but healer really doesn't seem fitting for the general idea of BLU. To be honest, this concept seems better fitting for an Alchemist job to join the fray, though since we already have that (meaning Chemist is out too) and CUL, it'd be more of a concept towards something like Dancer. You're definitely onto something in regards to broadening the idea of how the job would theoretically exist or function though.

[Mimilu]

It's definitely an interesting approach to the job, but healer really doesn't seem fitting for the general idea of BLU. To be honest, this concept seems better fitting for an Alchemist job to join the fray, though since we already have that (meaning Chemist is out too) and CUL, it'd be more of a concept towards something like Dancer.

Here you go:
Dancer (Healer)
Cannnoneer (Healer) (It's Chemist with an item-launching-cannon)