Blue mage shouldnt be "Limited"

[Curisu]

If he is not limited anymore then he wont be special and is just a other caster.

Also, BLU will never have the max level because it would break everything.

[Koka-Kola]

Comparing it to the other games blue mage was in, there were few limits and nothing held it back from doing content, so why now though. If it wasnt limited then it would still be special for learning spells. Currently the limited job status is making blue a dead end job. it's not even a job at this point, it's just content. it's a collection book. that's all. A blue mage should be able to have access to the same content as other casters. however I know for a fact specific skills are over powered. That's why it needs balance so it cant just take any spell without a cost.

Limited jobs should be real jobs. not side show entertainers.

[CKNovel]

I understand and I'm on the side that limited jobs shouldn't exist.

But if it wasn't limited we wouldn't have all the BLU flavor, just another caster.
White wind, Spammable stuns, Diamondback, those are also broken spells and the fun one such as death of missiles would be useless in "non-Blu" content.

You simply can't have both and SQEX made a choice they judged the closer to what a Blue Mage should feel like.

[Raikai]

I'm kinda satisfied on the premise of alternative gameplay, however:

1) Even with the separation from fighting with other jobs, why not keep BLU at the same level cap? Useful for outdoors activities, like FATE farming, or Maps parties, or even having them challenge the current dungeons by soloing them with Basic Instinct - I've tried with level 70 content and while is infinitely harder and much longer than with just a regular party, it's defnitely something fun to engage with.

2) Deep Dungeons available for solo Blue Mages - I'd defnitely sink in many hours of play trying to make through all of the floors, and even has replayability if you're interested in farming the sacks in there.

3) More incentive for Blue Mages to run their "endgame"... We always have the case of people mass running things for the first month or so, then it dies out when most already have their spells. One thing would be a daily Blue Mage roulette, but a much cooler thing would be something like Wondrous Tails, but for Blue Mage content.

4) The Blue Mage healing role defnitely needs attention. Most of the time you just spam Pom Cure, because given the squishyness of Blue tanks, sometimes a gcd not healing would probably mean death. The healer role needs OGCD healing/defensive spells to make tank healing marginally more interesting. All the other spells like Gobskin do very little for tanks.

5) Tanks still need to be less spiky, and the mitigation spells need to be instant cast! Dragon Force, Chelonian Gate, Diamondback, Devour all have close to 2s cast times, which make them extremely clunky to be used as reactive tools, especially if you're using GCDs as your filler attack.

6) This is more of a personal wish of mine, but Condensed Libra really feels like it would be much better if it was turned into some sort of dynamic Job resource/gauge. Something maybe inspired by Eureka's elemental wheel, in which it dynamically shifts with what you recently casted.

[Kemiko]

I'm just going to put it out there that I've heard as many things for and just as many things against the job to lose it's "Limited" status. Obviously, if it loses that status certain aspects of the job has to be changed since it isn't balanced against the others in current content. I think everyone would understand that and the only aspect of the Blue Mage that must be maintained is the ability to learn and use enemy abilities as your own. This hardly needs to be SPELLS - so it does not need to be a caster - but that has been the only constant for a Blue Mage in its various incarnations across the series.

FFXIV has done a fantastic job of cherry picking whatever the hells it wants as a job identity. The FFXIV Red Mage isn't at all what I'd consider to represent an iconic Red Mage or the FFXIV Dark Knight yet, here we are. They, more or less, work in the FFXIV universe so I just have to accept it.

I think if the team wanted to, they could most certainly could make the job work without it being Limited. I also don't think they want to. And on the subject of "the best" spellsets, let's be honest here. It already exists and even their minigame, the Masked Carnival, already dictates what you can and cannot use to complete it.

[Raikai]

I think if the team wanted to, they could most certainly could make the job work without it being Limited. I also don't think they want to. And on the subject of "the best" spellsets, let's be honest here. It already exists and even their minigame, the Masked Carnival, already dictates what you can and cannot use to complete it.

I honestly don't really see they lifting the Limited status of the job while keeping it as it is... Reason is that SE design team likes to have gameplay under tight leashes... Just look at the regular jobs and how you can't really customize playstyle. (E.G. all RDMs play the same, aim for the same melds, etc). Blue mages with their vastness of spells and different effects, and not even counting the 1hit KO ones, would certainly open for a lot of creative routes with the encounter design, which while not "overpowered" as it's spread out to be, could possibly trivialize some aspects.

And that is not really a bad thing. I'd really love different playstyle options among the jobs, but sadly it is not something that we got to see applied for SE's designs ever, and they do seem to labor in making this kind of design persist.

[Mikey_R]

If BLU was going to be made a full job, it would not behave like it does now. You will learn your spells through job quests and via level up (the job quests acting like, oh, you see this enemy use this ability, you learn it). It would be stuck as a caster DPS and so you would lose alot of utility, such as pom cure, gobskin, white wind, diamond back etc. It would have a rotation you can build to optimise damage, which will be dictated by the spells you learn from level up/job quests etc.

The problem is, you have two choices. You either make it a full job, in which case, you lose all the versatility the job has and make it just like any other caster with a rotation, or, you give it the freedom to do whatever it wants, it can have the powerful abilities, you can have the really strong heals etc. however, you have to sacrifice its ability to do current endgame raids so that you cannot use BLU to potentially cheese mechanics and make the fights trivial.

You can have one or the other, but not both at the same time.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

If BLU was going to be made a full job, it would not behave like it does now. You will learn your spells through job quests and via level up (the job quests acting like, oh, you see this enemy use this ability, you learn it). It would be stuck as a caster DPS and so you would lose alot of utility, such as pom cure, gobskin, white wind, diamond back etc. It would have a rotation you can build to optimise damage, which will be dictated by the spells you learn from level up/job quests etc.

The problem is, you have two choices. You either make it a full job, in which case, you lose all the versatility the job has and make it just like any other caster with a rotation

Losing the utility for it to become a real job would be a blessing. All Blue Mage is right now is a laughable joke. Spend the first week of the Blue Mage patch leveling it and learning the spells and then never touch it until there's another Blue Mage patch that is completed within the first week.

I do not find "Lol, I can spam missile and deathdoomwhitewindallmyhealthback" at all enjoyable or even funny. Blue Mage is, at least for the first 5 days until there is nothing left to do on it but laugh at the "job" for existing, more enjoyable when it acts like a real DPS with a real rotation.

This is Final Fantasy 14 a FF game where Red Mage is, in it's current iteration, primarily a caster and has far more offensive magic than it does healing magic. Blue Mage could absolutely become a real job and keep the "using monster actions" identity. White Wind could just become some AoE healing cooldown, it doesn't have to be a flat healing spell or ability. Doom could easily just become a cooldown that acts like MCH's Wildfire or it could become something like Ninja's Trick Attack. Most of the castable dps spells Blue Mage learns right now are spells with the same potency but different shapes and different colors.

You could easily keep Blue Mage's "customization", if it even has any now with some extremely powerful primal cooldowns being almost mandatory for savage raiding with blue, as well as certain actions like Aetherial Mimicry (you may as well not even play Blue Mage if you don't have Aetherial Mimicry) and healing actions like Pom Cure, by having a predetermined spell and ability list learned through leveling and job quests, you already learn some spells you've never seen a monster use through whalaqee totems. The customization would then come from attaining max level, you'd be able to learn spells from an assortment of monsters that aren't needed but are just different shapes and colors. Ifrit's Eruption would be learned at lvl 20 through a job quest and can be swapped out for Garuda's Feather rain when you reach lvl 50 and learn it yourself, they both do the same damage anyway just different looks. Same with Shock Strike and Mountain Buster, same potency different looks.

[Koka-Kola]

There are plenty of ways to get spells without the job quests. How the job quests currently work is fine (In order to continue job quests, you must get certain spells in open world)

I see everyone's point but I still do not see how it involves the limited status when Blue Mage has enough to be a normal job. Other classes have skills that push past their role. Redmage can heal and res, summoner can heal and res, whitemage and astro has good aoe dps skills. If we focus on just one role then how can we justify the rest of the jobs? Only difference is blue mage can learn and customize what it wants to bring into battle. It does not have a normal rotation and does not follow the "1-2-3" steps. Its damage is average due to shared cooldowns, it has some tanking skills, some healing skills, but it has mostly dps skills. Most of its status effects do not effect bosses and even some non-boss enemies. Blue mages main heal only heals for your current health. It costs 1500 PER cast and isn't that spammable. redmage and summoner heals CAN heal farm more than that and costs less. Most blue mage heals and buffs have a cooldown aswell. All this seems pretty balanced for a job. It just doesn't follow the stone structure that other jobs have with the "1-2-3" attack rotation and it is perfect that way. Only difference is that there is a limitation on what blue mage can do. I understand that people worry about META and roles but we have already crossed that line with other jobs. Blue mage is just average dps with some heals and buffs. It shouldn't be limited for its learning mechanic.

[Raikai]

There are plenty of ways to get spells without the job quests. How the job quests currently work is fine (In order to continue job quests, you must get certain spells in open world)

I see everyone's point but I still do not see how it involves the limited status when Blue Mage has enough to be a normal job. Other classes have skills that push past their role. Redmage can heal and res, summoner can heal and res, whitemage and astro has good aoe dps skills. If we focus on just one role then how can we justify the rest of the jobs? Only difference is blue mage can learn and customize what it wants to bring into battle. It does not have a normal rotation and does not follow the "1-2-3" steps. Its damage is average due to shared cooldowns, it has some tanking skills, some healing skills, but it has mostly dps skills. Most of its status effects do not effect bosses and even some non-boss enemies. Blue mages main heal only heals for your current health. It costs 1500 PER cast and isn't that spammable. redmage and summoner heals CAN heal farm more than that and costs less. Most blue mage heals and buffs have a cooldown aswell. All this seems pretty balanced for a job. It just doesn't follow the stone structure that other jobs have with the "1-2-3" attack rotation and it is perfect that way. Only difference is that there is a limitation on what blue mage can do. I understand that people worry about META and roles but we have already crossed that line with other jobs. Blue mage is just average dps with some heals and buffs. It shouldn't be limited for its learning mechanic.

White Wind isn't spammable, but just one single cast of it by a Blue mage in full health can completely heal the tank taking a big tank buster, or multiple people that decided not not move from aoe, that's WAY stronger than Vercure of the Dancer's heal. Unavoidable AoEs almost never fully blasts the party's HP (at least at once), so 2 White Winds from 2 different blue mage dpsers can even null the need of an actual second healer.

Diamondback's duration is so big that will let you ignore key mechanics from a fight... Why not have a party full of Blue Mages dpsers and worry less about stressful mechanics?

Aetherial Mimicry can literally let you have 1 healer and 1 tank be full fledged dpsers while their roles aren't needed.

Cactguard cast by a tank is a -15% spammable dmg reduction... Thus it would be optimal for your offtank always be a Blue Mage, to keep that on the main tank.

You're generalizing a lot there. Your point is valid in which you say that Blue Mages have the dps complexity, but those examples that I listed, and many others can literally break the balance of a fight, especially in Savage modes. If this doesn't let you see how the limited status is needed for how Blue Mages are at the moment, then I don't know how else I can put it into perspective...