BLU DPS

[Shurrikhan]

i think a combinations of the "meta" and the devs not wanting to be creative with the class system killed them in the long run .it could have let us to alot more.

A meta is merely what's optimal for the content presented; any "blame" therefore lies with the narrowness of the content or imbalances inherent in whom the content favors. Systematic removal of means of creative class interaction or character progression therebetween, however, has a lot to answer for...

Personally, I like the idea that certain jobs may be marginally more apt choices for particular fights in an otherwise standard composition, because one of, if not the, largest unique selling point(s) of XIV is the "anything and everything on a single character" concept. (Though such should also require that such swaps are highly feasible for player, without breaking up the sense of progression or contradicting the experience leading up to that point.) That said, leaving the classes then as mostly disjointed progressions given that concept makes no sense. How would changing from one finesse-based one-handed sword style after mastery to another, new but related style of the same characteristics leave me with only a hundredth of my former strength and health pool? How do so few things intercept? Why is there no impact between my progression choices when they're on the same character? These are absolutely immense areas of content, immersion, and design cohesion potential, almost each and every one of which have moved towards or reached a solution to or circumvention of the majority of our endgame content design limitations. And yet the design seems to go out of its way to ensure that things are disconnected and barebone. In early ARR, they spent almost as much content on hiding would-be content as on the content itself.

Why move the Maurauder's Guild from the pirate ships to the Coral Tower / Musketeer's Guild? To hide the progress towards a Gunner class and ignore suggestions of pirate-related plot integration and reiteratable class quests (not limited merely to Marauders, but merely anyone in association). Why move Gladiator quests from Colosseum trials to a revenge-and-romcom routine? Because people noted that a lot more could be done with the Colosseum. Why introduce the Thieves' Guild instead as the Rogue's Guild? Perhaps because, until that point, any associated lore would be ripe with moral conflict with possibility for real character choices and interactions, rather than merely caricatured crime-fighting?

Heck, why replace Fatigue with Rested Exp rather than fixing it as not to disproportionately limit non-casual players? To ensure that, for reasons of balance, there is no need to connect the classes by making it optimal instead that players focus all their rested exp on the class that can most benefit from it -- the lead class -- rather than being encouraged to build up supporting roles. Why create jobs, in the first place? To put the nail in the coffin of player choice as per the previous (poorly executed, but otherwise sound) make-you-own-job philosophy that the game was originally built on, so that there's less interactions to worry about down the line.

So many changes, so much work done... just to build a precedent for reduced workload by obscuring what potential existed. It's virtually the only true long-term design philosophy foresight we've seen -- prospect-trimming. And it's only natural that the game's potential, now, has suffered for it.

[Blueyes]

On Learning Blue Magic

Many people, Yoshida included, have a tendency to overthink the learning process. When people think about learning Blue Magic, they imagine venturing out into the open world, exploring a specific area until a specific monster is found, challenging that monster, then biding time until the desired ability is used against the Blue Mage, ending with a randomized or guaranteed chance of acquiring said ability.

In reality, that isn't how it's going to work. For starters, Red Mage and Samurai set a precedent. There is a high probability that future jobs will start at level 50 with all spells and abilities between levels 1 and 50 already mastered. Right from the start, Blue Mage will have all spells up to level 50 without putting forth an ounce of effort. Does that take away from the experience? Yeah, I think so, but it at least 'addresses' the issue of how Blue Mage will keep up with jobs that learn actions by leveling up by bypassing the entire process.

Moving forward from level 50, that is when it becomes a requirement for jobs to complete quests to learn new actions. This is the environment in which Blue Mage will learn new spells. It also doesn't have to be as basic as, "go into that field and fight that enemy until you learn something." Imagine if the main antagonist of the Blue Mage quest-line was a Beastmaster who tames monsters and pits them against the Warrior of Light, resulting in the Blue Mage becoming stronger as he or she overcomes the monster threats.

Now there are some cases past level 50 in which jobs learn new actions merely by leveling up. Specifically, in the level 60 to level 70 range. However, I don't think it would be unreasonable to ask Blue Mage to continue completing quests to learn new spells.

The Role of Blue Mage

There is a widespread belief that Blue Mage was always an incredibly diverse job that could fulfill the functions of any role, or at least mirrored Red Mage in terms of functionality. This, however, isn't entirely accurate.

Looking back at FFV, there were thirty Blue Magic spells. Of those spells, there were only four that didn't either inflict damage or inflict a negative status effect on an enemy. Those four spells were Moon Flute, Transfusion, Mighty Guard, and White Wind. Those first two were also double-edge swords, with Moon Flute inflicting Berserk on the entire party, resulting in a loss of control over the party's actions, and Transfusion which fully restored a party member's HP and MP, but by sacrificing the Blue Mage.

Throughout the history of Blue Mage, there were occasional unique utility spells. Blue Mage even had access to raise in one or two instances. However, the only defensive or support spells that have been present in several instances have been Mighty Guard and White Wind. And in all cases, the vast majority of Blue Magic have focused on either dealing damage of inflicting negative status effects.

My interpretation is the Blue Mage should function as a (support) DPS with Mighty Guard and White Wind as its unique raid utility. Nevermind the fact that Mighty Guard is currently a tank Limit Break. They can always change the name.

[Rayo]

Just gonna add a small tidbit, the in-universe cheat that is Soul Stones can explain why the player Blue Mage has access to blue magic instantly at level 50, though It would be an interesting story twist if they made blue magic in game kinda like My Hero Acadamia one for all, being a Soul stone made up of multiple previous wielders gaining powers from slaying beasts with you being the latest addition

Also I'm in the camp for Blue Mage Tank, not just would it be an interesting concept, it would be an interesting concept that can grab players attention

[TaiyoShikasu]

snip

While I'd be down with blue mage as a DPS because DPS main, there have been plenty of arguments for it to be a tank that don't just revolve around being sick of there being a million DPS compared to tanks and healers a lot of which comes from how the support abilities blue mage has would also be pretty well suited for a tank.

With the number of buff and debuff related abilities, as a tank that would give it an identity unique to it and pretty much only it. Would certainly take some work on the part of the developers considering how passed a certain point things like stun and silence are incredibly niche to use because most things are immune to them especially in boss and raid encounters, and something like Expose Weakness would probably be incredibly overpowered considering how some people aren't big on the suggestion of giving dark knight back their stat debuff and then something like Rippler allowing them to exchange buffs and debuffs with a target would be incredibly good to have.

[Tracewood]

Many of you are only thinking in the traditional FF sense, XIV can always deviate from that like they did with Red Mage.

Question is, would it be a caster? It is a "mage" but the dev team could do something else, like making it a scouting job and lorewise explain that blue magic is more akin to ninjutsu than actual magic. FF7 we had the enemy skill materia. With each new expansion new jobs start higher than it's predecessors, so it wouldn't be too unheard of that BLU would start with a chunk of spells from the get go, ala Gau from FF6 where he dives into the Veldt and come back with enemy skills, that would be BLU's introduction quest where you have to absorb enemy aether in your soulstone until it is satisfied and attunes to you. For the sake of "tradition", yes the quest would take some time to finish since you'd be going all over the place to learn abilities, just to satisfy the old school BLU fans.

[Tanathya]

Gau is not a BLU. He just learns to behave like the beasts he's been with, weaknesses included. He doesn't learn enemy skills, he just acts like them.

[Malkria]

If BLU is added, make it dps. Thoughts?

I'd rather it be made a magic tank in some way. We have three tanks, three healers, and a whole boat of DPS. Time to give the other two parts of the trinity some more options.

[Hugowulf]

Didn’t they say they were never going to add blue mage?

[Jandor]

Didn’t they say they were never going to add blue mage?

Nope. At the time they were asked they said they had no idea how they would go about it, but as far as I am aware they've never said 'never'.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather it be made a magic tank in some way. We have three tanks, three healers, and a whole boat of DPS. Time to give the other two parts of the trinity some more options.

To be fair, they've so pigeon-holed themselves in regards to healer and tank design that you can hardly expect otherwise. Dealing damage can be done through highly diverse means while still accomplishing tight enough parity of sync dependence, mobility, cleave, and AoE, and most importantly in-fight typical or theoretical DPS, but as long as both fight design and the community both expect to be able to swap-less tank TBs at intervals of 60 to 90 seconds past their first wave each -- and at near-equal eHP -- design has very, very little room for variance.

If you want more tanks and healer designs, chances are AST is going to have to first be more than a WHM-SCH hybrid with an added side-gimmick, and the tank toolkits will have to be more than just superior or inferior carbon-copies of each other, and yet still see competitive usability.