JUST FOR DISCUSSION: How would YOU make BLU a normal job with rotation

[Shurrikhan]

The solution would be to give BLU all its spells through levelling, which makes BLU nothing but a BLM with extra lore flavour. BLU doesn't have a gameplay identity, it is, and always has been a sidequest activity in whatever game it was in, and that has been accurately portrayed in this game.

Making BLU balanced for endgame content does not require that it acquire its skills in the same way. It's not among the first job choices; as a bonus job, it doesn't need to have the same ease of skill acquisition as everyone else. You can give it whatever additional requirements for 8-man content of their level that you want. To say that they must lose their unique content (skill acquisition) or must be unable to join in any and all standard content at level is a blatantly false ultimatum.

[Ghrian_]

In every ff game I've played BLU is a perfectly complete job to play (meaning, it can do all the content the game has) except for this one. And its role has always been the equivalent for casters to the dancer we've got ingame. Yeah, it could have some healing spells, but not an entire set to make it a healer (curing waltz anyone?). I don't mind the idea of performing all three roles as long as the job can retain some functionality.

The collecting of spells could have been made via job missions, or it could even stay the same, just introduce systems to check what spells you have to queue for a certain role.

In terms of rotation/mechanic, I'd love them to expand the concept of combos: if the target is inmune to your debuff, make the spells apply some kind of "partially ..." debuff so that even if you don't get the effect you can still make combos. Include many more combos and add a system that forces you to rotate among combos to fill some kind of gauge. A system to that end could be something like you get a buff so you generate more if you use a different combo from the previous ones. Once the gauge is filled, you can unleash some kind of very powerful spell BLUs have had in other games. Or maybe, to be thematic, a single use spell from the mob you apply the skill on.

This was just some idea from the top of my head, but I do wish SE to stop the fallacy of "limited jobs". Any fan of a job that gets it in the form of limited is destined to be disappointed.

[Mansion]

I would keep the Carnivale / field learning as an outside gimmick that does not work within current expansion instances. This would essentially be CC actions with BLU flavour. But if that's too much resources for one job, I'll happily give them up for a proper full job.

Then for the main job (DPS caster), I would give it a core rotation that is learnt through job quests and leveling. Those spells/abilities are mandatory and cannot be missed.
I'd see BLU working with a rotation that reflects its "hybrid" nature with a range of spells with several elements and damage type, and incorporate them in a thorough rotation. For instance a phase where you would build up debuffs on the enemy through elemental spells with a system of spell combo, and a burst phase where you can use powerful abilities (such as Primal stuff for instance). Or something like that, but essentially work on Combo Spells (because I think that's what BLU has that the other casters don't). And give things like White Wind / Mighty Guard as long CD abilities with a reasonable nerf to make them party wide and not too OP.

[Lambdafish]

Making BLU balanced for endgame content does not require that it acquire its skills in the same way. It's not among the first job choices; as a bonus job, it doesn't need to have the same ease of skill acquisition as everyone else. You can give it whatever additional requirements for 8-man content of their level that you want. To say that they must lose their unique content (skill acquisition) or must be unable to join in any and all standard content at level is a blatantly false ultimatum.

Simple fact is that duty finder/party finder exists. If you go into content without a specific skill, you could cause a lot of toxicity. The Devs have spent years trying to iron these problems out of the game, I doubt they would go backwards.

BLU wasn't a "sidequest activity" in XI so wrong there. Sure, some would be turned off by the idea of having to go collect spells before running most content but there are also a lot of us that are fine with it and don't mind the idea of advanced jobs.

The simple fact that you had to collect the spells in XI makes it side content. The difference between XI and XIV is that in XI you could also use it in content. I want you to go back to XI and tell me if you think the jobs are balanced and fair.

XI is a different beast that lacks job balance, group finders and the tight gameplay that requires jobs to be structured similarly.

[Kisshu]

Simple fact is that duty finder/party finder exists. If you go into content without a specific skill, you could cause a lot of toxicity. The Devs have spent years trying to iron these problems out of the game, I doubt they would go backwards.

That's kinda like people going into 30+ content without job stones or not doing their class quests for skills. There will always be those people in the game and we can't avoid it with the systems we have right now.

[jon041065]

Simple fact is that duty finder/party finder exists. If you go into content without a specific skill, you could cause a lot of toxicity. The Devs have spent years trying to iron these problems out of the game, I doubt they would go backwards.

They could have checks or need to have certain spells already learned before being allowed to queue up outside of premade parties. If you meant it as they might not have the spell set, the concept of a loadout of blue spells was only in XI and not something that can be claimed to be crucial to the blue mage identity. SE could select a set of spells available to blu depending on whatever role.\

The simple fact that you had to collect the spells in XI makes it side content. The difference between XI and XIV is that in XI you could also use it in content. I want you to go back to XI and tell me if you think the jobs are balanced and fair.

XI is a different beast that lacks job balance, group finders and the tight gameplay that requires jobs to be structured similarly.

I'm going to disagree with you that learning the spells made blue mage side content and that would also mean that summoner was side content because let's not act like the spirits made up most of what the job could do on that game.

I have played XI as recently as June and my blue mage knows all the spells and is mastered.

Bringing up XI balance was not relevant to the point your originally made about blue mage having always been side content in every game.

[Alleo]

Learn all the necessary skills for the rotation with job quests and to stop people from going into duty without them you can only queue for a certain level if you have done the job quest. (Should be done for every job imo) And as soon as you are inside this content you will get a fixed hot bar with all those skills on it. (Kinda like PVP and RP instances)

And for the skills themselves, just choose something that is flashy but not overpowered (even though most of its skills right now are bad anyway).

On top of that for those that want to collect more skills you will have that still as a side content and you can use all these skills on the over world and the carneval. They are learned through mostly solo content too but at least if you have a few that can only be learned with group content you now wont just be carried by others, you are a full team member.

[Nalien]

The simple fact that you had to collect the spells in XI makes it side content.

Have you played XI? You had to go out and collect spells for basically every Job with spells... You had to go out and get Ninjutsu Scrolls for Ninja to learn Ninjutsu. You had to go get Scrolls for White and Black Magic. Bard had to go get music Scrolls, heck to a lesser degree something like Ranger or Corsair had to buy Ammo... A lot of the powerful "required" ones were even rare/expensive drops... So I guess Ninja, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage, Scholar, Bard, Summoner (basically had to do Trials vs the summon it wanted to learn) Paladin and Dark Knight (both used White and Black Magic respectively), on top of Blue Mage, were "side content"?

[ReiMakoto]

You can't. Any idea that has BLU retain its signiture idea would revive long dead (for good reason) problems with the game. The cross class system from ARR for example, required that players go out of their way to obtain skills from other jobs that were vital, leading to WARs and DRKs going into raids without provoke. Learning skills from monsters (BLUs core identity) would bring this problem back into the core battle system.

The solution would be to give BLU all its spells through levelling, which makes BLU nothing but a BLM with extra lore flavour. BLU doesn't have a gameplay identity, it is, and always has been a sidequest activity in whatever game it was in, and that has been accurately portrayed in this game.

The only issue in current BLU is accessibility and availability of content. BLU should be 80, BLU should be able to do dungeons, Potd, Eureka, everything. But it should never be allowed to do raids and ultimates

Blus gameplay identity has consistently been a support mage with good damage, but not top tier, this applies to ff5,6,7,8 to an extent, 9, tactics and bravely default off of the top of my head.

[Shurrikhan]

Simple fact is that duty finder/party finder exists. If you go into content without a specific skill, you could cause a lot of toxicity. The Devs have spent years trying to iron these problems out of the game, I doubt they would go backwards.

So what? You can literally require BLU to have every single skill, however situational or likely to actually be used, before they can sign up for matchmaking.

Even now we don't automatically get every skill on regular jobs -- many come from job quests. The forums have long argued that you shouldn't be able to take a basic class into duty finder past level 35, or that you should have some minimum ilvl and ability count even for leveling dungeons. How is this any different? You set the requirement and the issue is done and gone.