Blue mage is a waste of potential, change my mind.

[Volsungr]

Or they can just give you the basic skills that you need for each role in the beginning like tank stance, basic heal since they already gave us basic dps skill. You can get more advanced skills from trials and raids. Because from what you said, its more to the player itself instead of the class flaw.

this sounds more plausible IMHO, at its roots and based on previous iteration of final fantasy, blue mage is a versatile class. so giving players choice at the start gives some fresh air to the game. they've done it with smn sch so no reason they can't do it again.

while I agree that blue mage should go back to their roots and given freedom of how we should develop the class, gating them to choose 1 route or the other at the start is a bit constricting imho. take example of arcanist into smn/sch branching. you could let the player experience how it feels first as dps until level 30 then i guess we can make it branch from there. with the vast amount of monster in eorzea i think it's completely possible to branch blue mage there.

[Shougun]

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

Have a set of skills that work in DF and those that don't, the ones that work in DF are gilded (gold border). Blue Mage maintains their limited side, including their sped up exp. Rather than spend time leveling they will spend time gathering their spells. In order to join content they must have the spells that exist below the level range of said content. So for example if you want to join level 42 dungeon you'll need everything level 42 and below (that's gilded) and even though some people may be level 45 in the dungeon you'll not be required to have earned that spell (just like some people don't have certain skills yet due to level). This is conveniently handled by a flipping job stone (so your hot bars will not be destroyed every time you want to switch, and there will be no issue of blue in a synced content suddenly switching to their other content or whatever). You can view this similarly to what they do in PvP for every single job (so it's not like they're foreign to this idea).

As for the progression, many of the skills will be easily pick-up able by doing current content as it exists and Blue Mage will now have access to the DF. Just like in PF when you DF and get a spell (while synced) you'll have a huge boost to your spell learning rate (so likely any instanced content will be learned in one go). While also they've limited side, so they can run around as a limited blue mage and pick up their DF skills, then they can also go into DF as their DF side and continue to pick up skills (both for limited and DF).

Now of course there are some weird skills (like if they wanted to give Blue a skill from Alexander lol), on content that even with access to DF would be a pain to learn- those you could make as part of the challenges in the carnival (just like you can learn ram and dragon voice through the carnival rather than doing the other instanced content that requires a group). This can be a perfect opportunity at the big quest points in the job, like other jobs that have usually a big fight at the 10s, so you could get some of the harder spells at these points (rather than forced to do some obscure content that even if was part of DF would still take a 50 min queue). Can also consider that some spells could be introduced backwards too, like your level 72 spell might be some mega spell from level 50 content that you can solo unsynced (may have to run it two or three times but entirely do-able, within reasonable time too).

Also to include we've already a method to obtain some spells through the totems, so you'd have that as well. In a unit all these methods would provide blue mage the ability to obtain any spell they need to obtain without having to resort to extreme uncomfortable effort or even remove the major component of learning stuff.

Some of these gilded spells will have double variant based on whether you're limited or normal, for example doom while limited could be as it is and the duty finder side would have an in theme but clearly 'balanced' narrative like casting doom would kill trash at some large % of hp (say 50%) but go on a decent cooldown (wouldn't work on anything inside a boss room, including boss trash), any time doom didn't kill something out right (so like bosses) doom would instead apply a doom debuff that increases damage taken by % and then at the end deals significant damage. Although personally I think the job would be more fun if they add more interplay mechanics and less spammy concepts, I'm speaking on the limited side, so adding cooldowns, more interactions, more instant casts /etc - so I'd suggest doom is more likely but far less spammable, rather than casting it 10 times in a row because 'fail fail fail fail fail fail fail', you'd cast it once every so often and every time it went it would work (minus perhaps some gating for FATEs). They've tried this a bit with some of the recent blue mage spells (I think of like Surpanakha for example), so I think they were actually listening to feedback as the creativity of the skill design increased quite a bit (of course almost all of them were PF exclusive lol, and we still have loads of what I'd call... 'meh' mechanical spells where they could have had some more give, take, response, glide, whatever marketing word you want to go for for interplay and general gameplay overlaying)

All together with the hyper accelerated exp you'd have an offset in cost needing to run around and gather your spells (hardly any time spent leveling, time spent going around the world instead). Limited blue would maintain some sort of restriction like unable to complete content that is of your current expansion (so it works on anything previous to whatever expansion you're on). Besides novelty, and that special blue sync-PF they made, limited blue can also see use in being a sort of cleanup job for obscure content (both solo and in groups, doing stuff unsynced with a 'limited' blue would be a large boon).

I would note at this point an idea passed around I quite liked and ran with was that learning spells increased your power, so here in you might then have this idea that anyone could use limited blue without having to 'main' blue (and get great potential power from the job) while those who 'main' blue still have to spend their current tier tokens to keep the DF side in line just like other jobs (the idea also adds a lot of value to spells that currently otherwise are pretty much valueless beyond the collection satisfaction of 'catching em all'). Of course the spell power would still sync for all that special blue part challenge and for FATEs so you don't ilvl900 a level 4 FATE (act as a sort of ilvl, limited blue not caring much about gear, but DF blue does). Making the job a bit more easily accessible to those who'd never want to main the job but still get some value out of the limited side (collection based rather than gear based), while also adding some extra quality of life to those who main it so they can more easily go out and obtain skills they need on their own (if their PF/DF is failing them).

Then there are loads of other ideas that can come in parallel to it to make it smoother or whatever but that would be the beginning jist. Such that you'd not be doing something incredibly silly like someone suggested by loading level 4 areas with mega bosses (I've seen no one suggest that. . . . not sure how it was a response to you lol), you'd largely keep consistent progression while using the carnival and totems where necessary (as a crutch technically), and you could even maintain the limited side through all of this (so you could have a huge book, just like PvP though some skills wont translate across into DF).

Of course one of those is that I think blue mage's limited side, if the goal is truly 'original blue' shouldn't be even designed with PF in mind (otherwise why is our Angel Whisper the worst one in the series? Clearly they're designing the job around PF which is holding it's 'true blue' nature back, perhaps less so than a DF would but if people are horribly against DF then I question why we should also let PF do it too then), and ideally (again personally) would be designed with a sort of affix / trading card concept. Such that skills begin to collide into wild combinations, and nearly no affix is just 'useless' (like many blue mage skills currently are). Like you might think of Diablo 3's legendary system and how at first an affix is neat but not great for your kit but later after trying a new spell or getting a new piece of gear suddenly you come back to it and rebuild your whole style for a while because you can and you start playing mental Lego. I don't think spamming one skill over and over to level the job was that interesting of design, and I had wished they made the job more explosive and thoughtful. It does become better as you get PF exclusive spells (which is another issue, as they said the job was designed for solo play, and locking that up into PF means your job is stuck to the whims of the server and what is 'hot' at the time), but even then the set up is pretty limited and forced even more limited by the forced trinity mechanic they added (while a novel gimmick I think it wont be a good choice for the creative future of the job, they could have kept adding those diverse skills without forcing you into a kit (and rather made interesting interworking spells that made people want to design kits over being forced into one- like if a set of healing spells played into each other's hands then you've to decide between different sets of cool interactions, like different legendary affixes, rather than "welp guess my damage is going to be AWFUL cause I'm in tank stance, so I /have/ to choose these spells")). So probably weird sounding as a lot of people liked the power buff from going the DD route of the trinity spell (or that blue mage healer has way more damage spells than our actual healers, which is more of a comment on our current healer status than the value of the forced trinity though), I think that spell is ultimately bad for the future of the job and they should find other means to introduce power scaling (like interesting interactions, or adding a more creative version of their passive system from FFXI).

Very experimental concept at the moment (as in I shower thought it, sounded plausible but also sounded like it was going to take a lot of polish not to have eight thousand holes like swiss cheese)- As there are a lot of 'different color' spells with a status change here and there one thought would also be you could have a sort of rotating kit that allowed blue to have many more skills than normal, like in your first act (keeping carnival theme) you get a semi-random selection of tier one skills, second act tier 2, and then your cherry on top 3. Act 1 being the 120 potency, act 2 being the 220 potency spells, etc. Each slot could have a general theme such that there is a reason to consider the slot beyond just the color and the debuff, like your act of courage might deal with some support buffs, perhaps in order to deal with your ancient blue magic (the most powerful) the DF variant has to pick certain acts to boost that, meanwhile like Ninja or other jobs they occasional touch upon the other rotations for other reasons. Then you get a situation where you might get a stun, sleep, or paralyze debuff each being a different act (all being the same potency) and you have a decision on top of a rotation. There would be some side utility skills that would respond to your debuffs on enemies to produce additional effects, bosses who normally ignore all this stuff would rather get tainted by a generic blue mage debuff that would still interact with your skills (in this way you don't break the job when monsters are immune, can keep many debuff skills, like bad breath becomes an incredible application of the debuff, and can work in a sort of new concept of a debuff 'support' job rather than the support support of something like dancer).

[TeraTyrantShadic]

How would Blue Mage reasonably be turned into a real job, though? What about people who queue for content while, hypothetically, only having Water Cannon or a few other similarly useless spells? What about the aggro abilities Blue Mage has that could possibly interfere with what a Tank is doing? What about spells like Missile, Launcher, Level 5 Death, etc.?

Well at the beginning water cannon is a must since it’s your first spell before anything else, plus you can only start queuing at around level 15 hence why I said they should add more spells form mobs in the starting zones near cities.
Aggro abilities would be healing wind and frog legs, however it is only an issue in an all Blue Mage composition and the only way healing wind can steal your aggro is if they are in mighty guard. It is fine in normal comp as the standard tank can easily hold the aggro against healing wind. Frog Legs is a provoke and it is doing what it is intended to do.
These Instant death/OP spells have already been nerfed to the point where you cannot even use it on some FATE bosses, final bosses of a dungeon and raid bosses. Yet you can’t use it in Masked Carnival either, the only good thing for it now is trash mobs in dungeons which is a good thing because as it stands it can be a normal job in normal party composition. FFXI only has Doom spells and no single digit or instant kill spell and rarely anyone uses the Doom spell because it doesn’t work in High end content or in Ambuscade where fights constantly change every month and the trash mobs in there are the bosses themselves and they are immune to Doom.

According to some posters, they're going add all of the essentials in and around the starting areas. You know, the devs have nothing better to do than adding boss abilities to some random lvl 4 trash mob, as they are wont to do. And who can forget about making things mandatory in order to have access to DF, because people just love that and totally won't ignore the only job with these restrictions.

At this point you’re shoving words into my mouth. I said there are over 57 Unique spells I have found in the starting zones near the city states. They are not essentials by the definition of endgame essential spells but rather essential in a sense of a basic kit before we attempt to gain the essential spells for high end duties or to participate in duty finder early on. I didn’t say “Give the level 3 mobs Feather Rain”, which is a gross exaggeration of what I said. So I will list them out the starting Zones skills (1-15)

Lower La Noscea
Numbing Tendrils - Aurelia (Paralysis) (Line Aoe)
Fowl Stench - Wild Dodo (Accuracy down) (Cone AoE)
Titan's Anger - Kobold Supplicant (Earth) (Circle Aoe Around target)
Titan's Boon - Kobold Potman (Buff) (Defense up)
Enstone - Kobold Dustman (Buff) (Add earth element to weapon attack)

Middle La Noscea
Fireball - Puk Hatchling (Fire) (Circle Aoe around target)
Screwdriver - Pugil (Water) (Fan Aoe) (Piercing)
Backflip - Puk Hatchling (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Fleece Butt - Lost Lamb (Blunt) (Single-Target)
Curse - Bogy (Unaspected) (Circle AoE around caster)
Pulverizing Pound - Wounded Aurochs (Blunt) (Fan Aoe)

Western Thanalan
Shatter - Rusty Coblyn, Copper Coblyn (Earth) (AoE Around Caster)
Small Claw - Thickshell (Slashing) (SIngle Target)
Cold Gaze - Desert Peiste (Paralysis) (Thin Cone Aoe)
Body Slam - Desert Peiste (Blunt) (Circle AoE around caster)
Small Claw - Thickshell (Slashing) (Single Target)
Gas Shell - Scaphite (Poison) (Thin cone aoe)
Painful Whip - Scaphite (Blunt) (Single Target)
Detonator - Bomb, Glide Bomb (Fire) (Large Circle Aoe around caster)

Central Thanalan
Acid Spray - Antling Worker, Antling soldier (Poison) (Cone Aoe)
Trap Jaws - Antling Worker, Antling Soldier (Piercing) (Single)
Frenetic Flurry - Spriggan Graverobber (Blunt) (Single target)
Jittering Jig - Spriggan Graverobber (Buff) (Attack Up)
Haste - Spriggan Graverobber (Buff) (Recast time of everything reduced)
Romp - Spriggan Graverobber (Blunt) (Fan Aoe)
Enfire - Amalj'aa Impaler, Amalj'aa Striker (Buff) (Make auto-attacks fire)
Devastate - Amalj'aa Striker (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Labored Leap - Toxic Toad (Blunt) (Circle aoe around caster)
Lap - (Blunt) (Single Target)

Central Shroud
Cap Bump - Forest Funguar (Blunt) (Single Target)
Stagnant Spray - Black Eft (Water) (Fan cone Aoe)
Acid Mist - Microchu (Poison) (Circle Aoe around caster)
Proboscis - Chigoe (Pierce) (Single Target)
Frost Breath - Anole (Ice) (Fan Aoe)
Reckless Charge - Hoglet (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Deadly Thrust - Diremite (Piercing) (Single Target)
Aqueous Discharge - Tree Slug (Water) (Circle aoe around caster)
Seed Volley - Roselet (blunt) (Single Target)
Swift Sough - Roselet (Pushback) (Cone Aoe)
Hell Slash - Magicked Bones (Slash) (Single Target)
Proboscis - Chigoe (Piercing) (Single Target)

East Shroud
Peck - Northern Vulture (Piercing) (Single target)
Wing cutter - Northern Vulture (Wind) (Fan Aoe)
Reckless Charge - Wild Hoglet (Blunt) (Line Aoe)
Aqueous Discharge - Tree Slug (Water) (Circle Aoe around caster)
Firecracker Shower - Goblin Hunter (Fire) (Circle Aoe around caster) (Stun)
Bombardier - Boring Weevil (Single Target) (Blunt)

North Shroud
Enaero - Ixali Dulltalon (Buff) (Add wind element to your attacks)
Swift Gust - Ixali Dulltalon (Buff) (Evasion Up)
Coming storm - Ixali Slowbeak (Buff) (Haste)

Middle and Lower La Noscea
Foul Bite - Wild Jackal (Piercing) (Single Target)
Sanguine Bite - Wild Jackal (Line Aoe) (HP Drain)
Bubble Shower - Megalocrab (Water) (Fan Aoe)

North Shroud and Lower La Noscea
Stone Throw - Galago, Opo-opo (Earth) (Single Target) (Blunt)

Central and North Shroud
Acid Mist - Microchu (Poison) (Circle Aoe around caster)

Central Thanalan and Middle La Noscea
Sharp Sting - Huge Hornet, Killer Wespe, Wespe (Piercing) (Single Target)

Central and Western Thanalan
Hammer Beak - Hammer Beak (Single Target) (Blunt)
Poison Breath - Hammer Beak (Poison) (Fan Aoe)
Gnaw - Orobon - (Piercing) (Single Target)

Central Shroud and Western Thanalan
Snap Jaw - Yarzon Feeder, Bog Yarzon (Piercing) (Single Target)
Wing Cutter - Nesting Buzzard, Arbor Buzzard (Wind) (Cone Aoe)

Central Shroud and Western Thanalan
Peck - Nesting Buzzard, Arbor Buzzard, Wild Dodo (Piercing) (Single target)

All Starting Locations
Bombardier - Little Ladybug (Single Target) (Blunt)
Somersault Slash - Wharf Rat, Star Marmot, Ground Squirrel (Single Target) (Slashing)
Firecracker Shower - Goblin mugger(Fire) (Circle Aoe around caster) (Stun)

Allow me to correct myself as well for some of my past posts. I say at the start you learn 9 spells before you hit level 15. Which were Water Cannon, Final Sting, Ice Spikes, Blood Drain, Acorn Bomb, Bomb Toss, Self-Destruct, Faze, Sticky Tongue. What I forgot to mention is that when you learn 5 spells, you learn Healing Wind as a Whalaqee totem. This means you have learned 10 spells so now you immediately learn 2 new spells which are Off-guard and Mighty Guard which are also Whalaqee totems. Already they have given the basic utility necessary for each role with only these 3 spells at 15. So before you hit level 15 you’ll learn over 12 spells.

[Mariel_Crystallie]

Shougun brought up a really great system that can be applied to the game, but i'm not sure if it's gonna be rework from the ground up at this point or can be implemented with the current blue mage state, because of the upcoming Shadowbringers contents itself and preparation to the next expansion. although if the system is applied i think blue mage can be a combination of spell collecting that can be used outside of instance and also can be used to raid with RF/PF inside instance, that's really neat and possible given the amount of skills it has.

the hyper accelerated exp might need to be toned down the bit, but we get a bonus exp every time we get a new spell. that way we can either opt to level with friends or solo while collecting skills.

we can probably keep the blue-mage exclusive content, after all they already make the whole system and it'll be a shame to scrape that. they can also keep coming up with a special challenge/additional contents added to the game in the future (all blue raid contents/trial, etc.)
if anything, think of it as a bonus for putting up with the limited job concept for 2 expansions :P

[Floortank]

BLU spells are kinda low-fidelity to be stuck with any specific number of them for duty finder. They not only look less interesting than the abilities of other Jobs, but they can also be pretty silly looking and it'd be strange to be stuck with certain specific spells as your meat and potatoes.

BLU spells work because there is a ton of them and they all have some sort of fractional utility so there's a reason to switch between them. Getting stuck with a handful of goofy, grab-baggy spells without the ability to switch, would feel bad.

Sure, this could be a way to get BLU into regular duty finder, but it would not be worth it. It's not the fun you think it would be, to be stuck with weird spells you didn't have to hunt down, when the only value of those weird spells is hunting them down.

[Tonkra]

BLU spells are kinda low-fidelity to be stuck with any specific number of them for duty finder.

I made a concept on how to integrate the BLU into the regular job roaster here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-(An-Approach)

it also comes with some visualizations. thanks for your feedback guys

[Volsungr]

BLU spells are kinda low-fidelity to be stuck with any specific number of them for duty finder. They not only look less interesting than the abilities of other Jobs, but they can also be pretty silly looking and it'd be strange to be stuck with certain specific spells as your meat and potatoes.

BLU spells work because there is a ton of them and they all have some sort of fractional utility so there's a reason to switch between them. Getting stuck with a handful of goofy, grab-baggy spells without the ability to switch, would feel bad.

Sure, this could be a way to get BLU into regular duty finder, but it would not be worth it. It's not the fun you think it would be, to be stuck with weird spells you didn't have to hunt down, when the only value of those weird spells is hunting them down.

i agree that hunting down the skills is part of the fun, however some of them are locked behind DF duty and we can't queue because the current state of blue mage job. I don't know how it's going over there but in Elemental people hardly do blue mage anymore. I only saw at most 3-4 blue mage PF at peak hours. I think its current state doesn't have enough appeal for people to keep subbing, despite the fun and the potential of blue mage can have.

[JiSH]

BLU spells work because there is a ton of them and they all have some sort of fractional utility so there's a reason to switch between them. Getting stuck with a handful of goofy, grab-baggy spells without the ability to switch, would feel bad.

to be fair, in high end "BLU" content like the Heavensward synced savage raids achievement, people only use optimized skill roster, so i don't think there will be any downside on limiting and making a specific set for duty finder or if they want to be used as normal job. because at the end of the day people will only use a few skills for optimization, and leave out all the, for the lack of better word, useless skills.

[SamsonBlacke]

Blue Mage is fine the way it is.

[Alysella]

It isn't. Blue mage now is mostly for memes and old contents. It's basically something that some people will only play when they have nothing to do. For its current state , Blue mage actually getting more updates than normal classes because of their "limited job" thing so its actually using more resources when they can make blue mage to become normal classes and spend the resources somewhere else