Please make Blue Mage a normal job

[Shougun]

Oh yeah, before we had either of those jobs, I thought Blue Magic could be combined into the Gunblade tank (similarly to how AST encompasses Time Mage).

I figured Magitek was essentially stealing and creating 'artificial magic', which screamed Blue Magic to me.
It would suit things like Magic Missile (ranged enmity skill) and Ray Bomb perfectly. Mighty Guard could be it's LB3, etc.

Yeah I feel blue mage tank would be pretty cool, also it would make a decent amount of sense that your blue magic is making the enemy mad lol. Nothing like getting fish slap by your own fish XD.

"How can you slap!?!!" lol.

Plus I thought taking FFXI story forward I thought would be fun with Immortal Lion (which totally sounds like a tank stance lol). Azure Eye being their demon eye / sauron eye mode where they focus more on casting.

Gunblade blue mage sounds cool btw. Mighty Guard stay an LB3 would also have been nice :P and make it feel even more epic since it would be.. well an lb XD.

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Without tank I think an offensive support with some sort of safety net design where failed support turns into damage would be the next good place to go since it would allow blue mage some more wonky spells and diversity.

I know people like to point at BLM but I would point more towards SMN if we had to point at another mage as an inspiration point. Red Mage wasn't a terrible example either, but I general dislike black mage as the go to people (usually on the offensive of blue mage) use since it's like "nah.. he has to have some weird stuff and much of that weird stuff CAN work but you need more wiggle room than 'top dps' - also I know you're using BLM as the most generic not even trying example to say we can't have more mages". Although to be fair, SMN is pretty dang good damage and still has nice support so.. ... eh.. Some jobs get to have and eat their cake lol. The fact you said red mage over black mage makes me believe you care to have the conversation more than a usual person saying "hey. . wait a moment . . ". So thumbs up for that . Black mage is clearly all power and not much else, Blue has to be at least like RDM or SMN not BLM.

Like their raise could be unique and work both on the dead and the living something akin to a warden's peon. If you cast it on them while they're living it'll last X seconds, at the end it'll either cure them significantly but if they die before the duration is up then they'll be immediately raised instead. Unlike PF where they balanced the job even though they claim to have wanted to make 'true blue' "/flips and throws table" (and made the worst angel whisper in the history of FF), in a normal setting adding a cooldown and giving it such a auto-raise like property would actually make sense (I wouldn't have minded the cooldown on limited as much either if it AT LEAST could auto-raise self, I thought they were going to add that spell so players could final sting something on their lonesome- but no... the worst raise in our game and the worst angel whisper in FF series XD). White Wind for example could also largely be fine so long as it is a choice between damage or support in a mechanic that acts as a sort of cooldown (largely as in you can keep the major theme, and may even improve use case / 'feel', but may need some tweaks on rules), in that situation like if you had a mechanic to fill a bar (in this case I imagine filling a bar that looks like his staff lol), then players have to choose damage or support and should choose damage in all but the most dire situations (like Paladin with their clemency).

They could also be one of the only caster mages that come with an interrupt, bit of a special utility case then.

Then Blue Mage would definitely have more than a dancer (another support job) during boss fights (more closer to SMN / RDM) but situationally could provide short term big support (giving them a bit of a variety feeling that they should have). Bigger burst than Red Mage but not as much breadth (like if you dropped a raise and then a white wind, you'd then have put two mechanics on cooldown in effect one literal one more mechanical, meanwhile red mage is still going 'raise raise raise raise vercure vercure'). Then against trash they're not as bulky but their utility shines even more (making a closer comparison to dancer, meaning blue mage shifts on the scale a bit), locking up and generally just messing with monsters.

Of course you might suggest if they had limited resources, even if blue mage might be cheaper than a normal from fresh slate job to add, that you'd hope they do things even more disparate than whatever we currently have. I'm not entirely against that idea, it's why I usually can be found suggesting things that are "not what we have" lol (like a transformation job, or like a bruiser (damage role) battle mage with Golbez, Ex-Death, Sauron inspiration and a construction sort of take on geomancer magic (which I call Geoknight), or even like dark offensive healer, or while not crazy into chemist theme still think it can be interesting addition- things that looks and plays quite different). I think you can still do that with blue mage, like I think making blue mage work with acts (shifting combos that have lite-decisions, as a sort of melee job meets magic would be a start to that), but I definitely accept the concern and desire for things to be unique as a logical concern. And at least you didn't say BLM which is the worst ideal of BLU, so I believe you're trying more than the most generic "that looks similar to X" rebuttal. Still would you say it's impossible that it would be different enough to be interesting (visually and mechanically), or that it just seems unlikely and that other jobs seem far more likely to be valuable in their addition to the game and so they should be sought for first? The first I'd naturally argue against but the later sounds like a valid personal opinion.

Although I've also been pretty upfront that I would be okay if they actually did what they said and make blue mage go insane, if they want it to be limited then DONT design it around PF balance. Again, worst angel whisper ever lol - which makes sense if you were trying to balance content around party stuff and didn't want it to be too OP, but then that makes their whole reason why blue mage is limited feels more like a cop out then an actual reason ("we wanted to make a cheap (not costly) pf exclusive job and claim we added blue mage so people stop asking for it", is what it ultimately sounds like meanwhile their words of intent for why they did what they did don't line up), certainly part of the salt for this job comes from their communication and the mixed and confused messages that came with it, and then the lack of communication there after.

Current limited blue, as is, was not well designed (imo, but obviously prepared to die on that hill) and either normal or limited it should receive major revisions from the very beginning, it's current design has many flaws and some of that includes just a generally boring design that ONLY gets better if you get lucky with the PF content while it's hot. If you don't its the most uninteresting job, mechanically at least, of the whole game (more simple than Paladin in 2.0 era), to the point equally leveled normal jobs are mechanically more interesting with far more actually valuable tools to use, if you do get that PF exclusive content then congratulations but it was a silly design to make it exist that way (it's not good design to be like "oh yeah it stops being super spammy basic once you're level 60 and you've these 6 more PF exclusive skills on that supposedly primarily solo designed job", not rage inducing but nearly there in terms of logic). Even when you get to the better I would still say it's still poorly designed since their current design makes so many spells worthless - for a job touted to have kits the only way they actually gave players a kit was the most artificial and boring way (via forced trinity and ultimately I think that spell disrupts the quality of future builds, so I don't even think it was a good spell to add), as said before they should look towards Diablo 3 when it's performing at it's peak and how many different builds can be so interesting and useful, or heck even Hades the recent rogue like game from Supergiant with all the boons, poms, and weapons (people who made Bastion / Transistor). If it must be limited then so be it, but it is currently designed in a way where I constantly have to edit my words because I'm not going for cruel.. but the only word that pops into my mind is 'awful' (both on the design and communication front - it's an opinon open to change as I watch what happens but in general, and obviously lol, my view of blue mage currently is rather dim). If it's normal then awesome because I actually think their normal jobs are all pretty fun and enjoyed leveling every single one of them (and have all of them to 80), so I have faith a normal blue would have also been fun (yes I know healers have a problem right now, I even made a thread trying to make a healer that would feel more involved, as well as other tweaks and general like support).

I'm also not entirely against the idea of PF focused limited job but I think choosing blue mage for that is a very bad idea and makes the job poorly designed as a result (forced the trinity on it, have to balance the job they removed form PF due to not wanting to balance it, job relies on the content not dying but the content will organically die because of how it's limited (which is a big issue for blue), progression of skills/job means you're generally the least interesting and most generically designed job for most of your beginning experience (1 skill spam) until you get a specific set of PF exclusive skills, they failed to deliver the spirit of a few skills already due to balance like Angel Whisper or Fire Angon, etc), they should try something else that would flow a lot smoother and as well not have been desired as a main job - for example magitek content (xenogears, zone of the enders, gundam, robotech, etc, no one, or at least almost no one, would have ever expected that to be a normal job, and having a squadron / fleet, would feel very fitting, as well the progression design would be relatively easy to create a flow that allows a smooth transition into content even if it's not 'hot' rather than blue mage where if it's not hot then your blue mage is going to have shallow depth and mechanics).

Naturally when I say normal for blue mage I'm thinking more of 'both' in that situation since I see each part helping the other out really neatly and generally don't like to see content removed (redesigns are okay though, if blue is to never become normal than I hope the current limited blue is revamped from the beginning to the end). Like by just having a normal side you already fix many of the issues of the current limited and it even helps out the normal side too- you could learn your DF spells in limited form or your limited in DF form, get access to a huge library but DF could be parsed down for balance, etc.

[JiSH]

"Like their raise could be unique ..."

"... it's current design has many flaws and some of that includes just a generally boring design ..."

"... I think choosing blue mage for that is a very bad idea and makes the job poorly designed as a result (forced the trinity on it, have to balance the job they removed form PF due to not wanting to balance it"

"Naturally when I say normal for blue mage I'm thinking more of 'both' ...

I like this idea, personally i think the current Caster meta is definitely imbalanced especially in savager raid/optimized situation, it's how BLM doesn't have a raise skill "because of lore", when they only dish out a little bit more damage but need a lot of optimization compared to SMN. Also there's no way people would take RDM over SMN, the only times people will take RDM over SMN is either when they "just personally like the job better", or they're just trying to breeze through raid progression with Ver-raise and switch over to SMN/BLM when need the dps, especially in early weeks of savage raid. For me it's "either remove all the raise skills from casters, or give all of them raise skills". With your idea, we can have a highly mechanical and situational raise skill where they don't just "swiftcast and push a button", i think it'll be a lot more balanced this way.

Yes, we're kind of a little late to the game because of how deep we are in the limited job hole. People coming to the game late or just not having time to play BLU when it's released already set them back by a lot, most people only grind hard like in the first week and then it becomes a kind of "dead content" where there are barely any people doing it, and most of the time you just ask your circle of friends to help you out to get skills(that is, implying everyone have that circle of friend to help them out). With how almost all the OGCDs locked behind primals it really is just one skill spamming if you don't get them, as most of the skills you can get in the overworld are just gimmick skills that you don't really use in real situations. Although to be fair, when you get 8 BLUs to do synced savage content, they need a lot of optimization because they essentially have 8 "trick attacks", and how they can skip mechanics with Diamondback, and burst the boss to death in the final percentage with Flute+Final Sting.

Lastly, the current BLU doesn't work because how lacking they are in the tanking and healing department, and FFXIV fights is designed around the role trinity, and just won't work without them. It's a bit ironic because i remember them saying that they made BLU limited because they don't want to spend a lot of resources balancing them out, when in fact the they do still have to balance them.
I'm also more of a "just make BLU both Limited and Normal Job" instead of just deleting the Limited right out because some people out there probably enjoys how BLU are right now. I just want SE to do the job justice.

[Alysella]

They are just trying something new with blue mage and trying to add some contents in the minor patch so basically blue mage is what it is. It's just a filler. This idea of making blue mage as limited job is kinda killing the job considered it has its own progress and party oriented. people who start late will probably having a really bad time and they will stop bothering about blue mage. Balancing blue mage to become a normal job will take some efforts but it's doable. It's just whether they want to do it or just making a new class instead.