Quote Originally Posted by Melichoir View Post
There is no way around this. You either dumb it down and dissatisfy the players because it loses its identity, or you create its own content that can be played on the side
I keep seeing this idea thrown around (by other players and the devs) and I have no idea where it came from. FFXI was the only game to give Blue Mages hundreds of spells that they could mix and match. You know how many enemy skills Kimahri could learn? 12! And, okay, fair enough, Kimahri is more of a hybrid BLU/DRG. But Quina is a Blue Mage through and through, and s/he only learns 24 blue magic spells. Even the original Blue Mage from FFV could only learn 30 spells! Compare that Paladin's 29 current abilities (not even counting Role Actions) and you begin to see how saying Blue Mage getting stripped of its identity is a ridiculous concept.

The other argument I keep seeing is, "It would just be Black Mage but with different spell names!" You could boil down any of the classes to that base level, if you really wanted to. PLD, WAR and DRK just hold hate and mitigate damage with different named abilities that all do essentially the same thing. But, of course, there are differences, and those differences in gameplay and aesthetics are enough to make us prefer playing one over another.

I have no idea what Blue Mage's particular gimmick could have been, but then I never would have predicted Red Mage's mana gauge either. As long as I was still able to use Mighty Guard and 1,000 Needles, I wouldn't mind being lumped into the Magic Ranged DPS category, or any other of the preset roles.