Then this is where we fundamentally disagree, because I do not believe it "has to be" anything if they added it into the roster as a real job. It could have been a tank and worked radically different to everything we've been discussing while paying homage to the original Blue Mage from older FF games. Dualgunner already gave several ways they could have implemented Mighty Guard to make it better caster skill than a Shield Oath ripoff. They could have done dozens of things to differentiate White Wind from Vercure.

The best comp for years has always been primarily physical damage. They could have BLU be the gimmick caster-support to make caster comps competetive with physical ones. They already got Eerie Light which is a bonkers 30% magic vuln. There are so many ways they could have taken BLU as a real job to implement it in to the game, which is the crux of my issue.

I don't hate BLU. I hate limited jobs. BLU is a symptom, not the cause. They cheapened out on adding something that could have been unique and sequestered it into side content without even making it stand apart from the real jobs we have right now. If you took a synced party into coil, what does BLU actually bring to the table besides White Wind? What does BLU in this form actually add to the game outside of just memeing on 5 year old content, and is any of it actually overpowered enough to justify being limited? That is my problem with all of this. BLU is the solution to a problem SE created out of thin air, when it could have been a solution to actual problems in the game.