Rework Bluemage!

[Jandor]

To get back into brainstorming, you could plausibly make spell interactions BLU's thing (the way Astral Fire/Umbral Ice is BLM's thing and Aetherflow is SMN's thing), but you need to take it well beyond just the gimmicky stuff currently in place.

Could take advantage of the elemental spells.

In FFXIV you have the following interactions:
Fire melts Ice, Ice blocks Wind, Wind extinguishes Fire (yes I know that last one is stupid.)
Lightning boils Water, Water erodes Earth, Earth grounds Lightning.

For example, you use an earth spell and it gives you an earth buff, any water aligned spell used will do bonus damage because it's going "through" the element it's strongest against.
So your water spell then does bonus damage, removes the earth status, and replaces it with a water one. Then you use lightning to attack, clear the water status, and complete a basic 3 button combo, gaining a 'blue mage token' to be spent on a more impressive non-aligned spell like 'Bad Breath'.

Thinking a gauge something like this.



Start with Fire, Fire extinguished by Wind, Wind blocked by Ice, one "token" granted.
Lightning opener, grounded by Earth, eroded by Water, second elemental triangle "token" granted, and one bigger "token" for completing the whole elemental wheel.

Small token for something like a toned down Bad Breath.
Bigger token for stuff like the Primal spells but beefed up?

I think the job could probably still use a little more than that, but it's a solid enough foundation to build upon IMHO.

[Kisshu]

Snip.

I like this idea. Gives the job some free-form rotation based on what you need. For the first rotation you might want Song of Torment to hit the hardest, so you use it after your fire spell, but the next time you get to wind the song is still active, so you use another wind spell.
Also building to more powerfull spells would be nice, such as the primal spells.

[Jandor]

I like this idea. Gives the job some free-form rotation based on what you need. For the first rotation you might want Song of Torment to hit the hardest, so you use it after your fire spell, but the next time you get to wind the song is still active, so you use another wind spell.
Also building to more powerfull spells would be nice, such as the primal spells.

I also wanted to keep some of the spell selection aspect of BLU as well. I think with a basic gauge and spenders you could have a check-list instead of a fixed duty set.

So for example, for the DF set it could require that you slot at least:

1. 6x different elemental builders.
2. 3x single target spells that work as a combo.
3. 3x AoE spells that work as a combo.
4. 2x different small blue token spenders.
5. 2x different large blue token spenders.
6. 1x crowd control spell.
7. 1x enemy debuff.
8. 1x self buff.
9. 3x oGCD abilities.

1 spell can check off multiple things.

An AoE ice spell that binds would check off 1, 3 and 6.

An oGCD that requires a small blue token would check off 4 and 9.

In theory you keep quite a bit of customization while ensuring that a BLU in duty finder always has a minimum level of kit.

[Duelle]

For example, you use an earth spell and it gives you an earth buff, any water aligned spell used will do bonus damage because it's going "through" the element it's strongest against.
So your water spell then does bonus damage, removes the earth status, and replaces it with a water one. Then you use lightning to attack, clear the water status, and complete a basic 3 button combo, gaining a 'blue mage token' to be spent on a more impressive non-aligned spell like 'Bad Breath'.

This idea has potential, though I'm not sure of what to use as the big payoff abilities. Primal spells seem a bit odd to me since getting them is a bit of a pain and they already have prohibitive/shared cooldowns.

You're right that BLU would need something beyond the system you described, which is why I'll toss in Spell Combinations. Imagine additional slots in the BLU spellbook that have a link between them like the linked materia slots from FFVII, and setting two abilities in those slots allows them to either combine into a new ability or combo into each other.

What sparked the idea was Ice Spikes + Thousand Needles, either creating a new attack that deals ice damage at the cost of no longer dealing 1000 fixed damage (though it'd scale with stats like normal AoEs) or allow Ice Spikes to be comboed with Thousand Needles (casting Ice Spikes reduces the cast time of the next Thousand Needles by 4s and causes it to deal ice damage). Another example would be Toad Oil comboing with Flying Frenzy to apply an oil debuff on target that increases damage taken from fire-aspected blue magic (Bomb Toss, Flamethrower, Eruption).

While combining spells would be harder than allowing them to combo, it might be possible to combine the OP spells (Lv5 Petrify, Tail Screw) with other spells to make them usable in normal duties while still allowing you to use them in their OP state outside of dungeons and raids.