Blue Mage needs attention

[RightfulKing]

I've been playing Blue Mage for about twenty levels, now, and I just wanted to give some of my opinions on it.

I was really looking forward to getting to it, since blue mage has always been my favorite class in the franchise. When I heard about its "limited job" status I was disheartened, but I decided to try it, regardless.

The process of gaining spells from monsters is entertaining, and I like that some of them are harder to get than others, which makes them feel earned. It also feels really flexible! There are a bunch of very satisfying combinations you can pull off!

However, in the long run, the effort to obtain them doesn't seem like it pays off purely because of Blue Mage's "limited" status. You have all these really cool spells, sure! But even after you put all that effort in, you can only use them in certain areas for certain missions. You can't even complete the main story with it. It just feels stifling.

And after I get all the spells and max out the leveling, what then? Will it just become a minigame?

I've looked at the spell roster and understand that some of the spells would be overpowered for multiplayer, but I'd be fine with those getting nerfed/balanced if it means I can play the full game, with my friends, as my favorite class.

I've looked on different forums and sites and a lot of people seem to feel similar to me, so it stings that Square Enix hasn't acknowledged it.

I hardly ever see any other blue mages when I'm playing, and I think it's because... well, why would you bother with such a restricting job when you could play the full game with literally any other one?

I really, really want them to look back into Blue Mage and try to balance it to be a full job, because it seems pretty dead to me, right now.

[Atamis]

I like to think square regrets casualizing and dumbing down every job, and the BLU was some poor devs attempt at bringing some of the magic back.

[TankHunter678]

The problem with BLU was they wanted to keep the fantasy of the class, obtaining abilities of monsters from monsters, but ran into an issue where if it took part of normal ques it could have huge swaths of needed abilities missing simply because people have not obtained them. If they made it like a stock standard class then most of the abilities would be handed to you as you level up and only certain ones would be obtained via the job story monsters. There was also the issue of what role to put it in because due to the kind of abilities BLU could get turns it into an Omni Role if you try to keep it to class fantasy.

[RightfulKing]

I'm new to FFXIV, so my understanding of its balance and jobs aren't as much as a lot of the other people on here, but maybe the idea of it being an omni role is workable?

I'm not saying it would fulfill all niches at every given time, heavens no! But maybe its status could change automatically depending on what spells you have loaded up? Say you mostly have healing spells on deck, perhaps the game could just switch your categorization to healer based on that alone? I think breaking from the rigid story structure of the other magic-related classes could be a breath of fresh air!

[Rockette]

Blue Mage is exactly what you have described. It's a mini game / side quest. It was never intended to be a proper role.

[RightfulKing]

I know, but the mini game gets old after awhile and the novelty grows stale. I think it sucks to see a very unique job with so much potential just get shoved to the side like this.

These forums are for giving feedback and I was just giving mine.

[MaraD_]

For some reason the creator has the idea it needs to fit the FF11 style "fantasy". (With light hints of the FF5 version)
But didnt feel this way with all the other jobs. (cant kill undead with raise, MNKs get stronger with better gear, etc)

Personally think this was corporate lip service, and the real reason is something else.
Ranging from; it was intended to be another role (other than caster DPS) like the leaker said (suggested melee DPS originally), or even multiple roles.
Personally think DNC was meant to be a physical ranged healer, and BLU was meant to be a tank.
(again, this is pure speculation on my part.)
Due to changes to both healers and tanks, which came after the initial plans for DNC and BLU, they couldnt be tanks anymore. (BLU was in development before storm blood, and was originally hoped to be part of SBs release)
But as time went on, BLU kept getting delayed, despite being "finished" which makes me think the leakers statement about it originally being a counter to NIN as a melee support was true, and was one phase of BLUs changed role. Tanks got over simplified, and this would prevent BLU from being a tank. So they went with melee support. But with healers being simplified, and cant have a healer not using "Robe of Healing" in its name, DNC was most likely bumped to DPS, making it a new support job, and kind of ruining the build up of making a melee support.
(plus, I doubt yoshida would allow a real melee caster. He doesnt seem to like making jobs go outside of stereotypical archetypes for each role, but does sometimes if its a DPS.)
Anyways, at some point, they were deciding what to do with BLU, and since it was most likely looking like they would either scrap it, or put it on hold, someone brought up the idea of a limited job, and yoshida rolled with that.

Over all, BLU can be made into a full job at any point, with most of the hard work already done. (which is animations, 3d models, etc)
But if BLU were to become a full job, that would be the equivalent of introducing a new job, and would be kept quiet until brought up as a surprise.
Which is the most likely thing. Not because Yoshida wants to please the fans. But because, from a business point of view, its an extremely cheap and money saving option later down the road.
Theres no way SE wouldnt do it, just to cut corners.

[Cidel]

First of all:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...?highlight=BLU

Now that that's out of the way, so far the only info we have on anything upcoming for BLU is that 5.1 or so is supposed to be seeing "updates" to them which will probably just be level cap to 60 and like thirty-ish+ more spells to learn and never use or overshadow whatever we got in 1-50. Yoshi-P doesn't seem to want to hear any criticism about BLU until then, as if they have some big plan in store for it, when we all know they'll probably just add a mount or glamour to the Carnival and add even more "puzzles" which will probably equate to "use this marginally useless spell in this situation because it's the only way to beat it unless you discover a Self-Destruct/Final Sting cheese method." Oh, and maybe they'll add a little more weight to elemental rock-paper-scissors.

BLU was at least something resembling enjoyable when you could go out and collect spells on your own time/terms out in the world, rather than run trials/entire dungeons ad nauseam for a low chance of learning an underwhelming spell. It's not fun to most people to have to run years-old primal trials for something with the fickle success rate of a mount whistle, pre-drop rate buff. It's like they didn't even try to hide the fact that BLU was just a time-waster to keep people obstinately occupied with low-success rate spell acquisition with a whole lot of nothing to do with them afterwards, with the added perk of making ARR EX trials seem active for the entirety of two-three weeks.