Brief History of FFXIV with a personal interest
Final Fantasy XIV is an MMO that had a bad start, but ever since the release of A Realm Reborn and under a new director, Naoki Yoshida. It has gotten better, suffice to say he saved FFXIV. I personally started the game during the initial release of ARR, it was a fun time and a great experience and I love the game to bits.
Over the years FFXIV has made such a huge impression on me with games under the MMO genre and I wouldn’t say Final Fantasy XIV is my first MMO, but it was my first MMO that I understood at the time.
During ARR a new job was added in the fray during the raiding scene, Ninja. It nearly put most static in chaos trying to regear and changing some strats to include Ninja as it is a very powerful DPS at the time (It still is).
Then came Heavensward, three new jobs were added, one for each role. Astrologian as a healer; Dark Knight as a Tank; Machinist as DPS. Three new exciting jobs that make people play their own role in a new way in raids, trials and dungeons.
Then came Stormblood, during this time I had to tend to important life matters but it was when they released two new DPS but in different categories. Samurai as a melee DPS and Red Mage as a caster DPS.
Finally we arrive at the present, Shadowbringers. Where it introduces a lot of Quality of life improvements for gathering and crafting and it is more focused on the story as well as crafting and gathering and it introduces two new jobs. Dancer as a range DPS and Gunbreaker as a Tank.
You may be wondering why I say only two jobs were released during Stormblood, well… unfortunately a third job was released and it was a fan series favourite. Why unfortunate? It introduces a new controversial category of ‘jobs’. Limited Jobs, jobs that cannot participate in current tier content. This is where our video leads into…
Limited Jobs
Limited ‘jobs’ are classes that are meant for solo play and are not balanced for group play. With the recent patch of 5.45 its current level cap is 70 with 104 spells that can be learned through the open world, dungeons, trials and raids. In this section I’m going to be explaining why Limited Jobs is a bad idea to begin with and why it cannot work in any MMOs regardless of the type of MMO it is, weather it is like Runescape, Destiny 2, Phantasy Star Online 2, World of Warcraft, Wildtstar (Dead game), Star Wars the Old Republic, Dungeon Fighter Online, Guild Wars 2 and many other MMOs.
Limited Job, in concept doesn’t sound too bad of an idea where people can play an unbalanced class in a game that is separate from the main content. However, how the developers did it in FFXIV, done it in such a way that it was affecting the experience of playing as a Blue Mage as well as affecting the main content. Let me preface by saying I have no hatred, just passion and I want to help improve the game cause I care about FFXIV.
The Solo Experience
The first issue was the design of it to be a solo play experience, during its initial launch it was capped at 50 and doing dungeons alone as a Blue Mage with all the skills is somewhat doable depending on the player’s knowledge of the fights and its mechanics and spells of each blue magic. Doing it alone would take up from 20 - 45 minutes (Synced) depending how good you are playing as a Blue Mage alone, however there is no incentive to do dungeons alone when it was released with the cap of 50.
*When I said Synced, I meant that your level and item level will be adjusted to the dungeon’s recommended level and item level*
When the cap for 60 was introduced, they made it so that when you do it synced, it’ll add to a Blue Mage log where you will get a one time reward for clearing that dungeon as an all Blue Mage party and the spells from the monsters in that dungeon would be a guarantee learn. Meaning soloing it is still not really recommended unless you want to challenge yourself.
With the recent level cap of 70, and the Blue Mage’s spell Basic Instinct, made doing dungeons alone (Synced) doable, but most people prefer to do it in a party where it is now a lot faster now that players have two options to instantly kill groups of enemies. Ultravibration and Level 5 Death allowing players to mass pull twice per hallway run before the each boss battle and most of them requires 2 mass pulls and with 4 blue mages, with a 1m40s cooldown, you have 8 instant death skills to easily wipe the trash mobs before the boss. This doesn’t apply to certain dungeons, but most importantly it doesn’t apply to savage raid and extreme trial content (when synced) where the fights are now mechanic heavy and doing it alone is not feasible especially when mechanics require 8 people to do it properly meaning all party members MUST be alive during that mechanic phase otherwise it is a wipe.
During A Realm Reborn days there were a type of parties called carries, where players can die in the fight and the 7 other players do the fight with one less person. The only exception to this rule was The Final Coil of Bahamut - Turn 3 where if one player dies, the boss gets buffed and it’ll keep getting buff if the player isn’t revived quickly. The developers had issues with carry parties profiting with either gil or actually real money transfers and so from Heavensward onwards in trials and raids, it is mandatory to have all 8 party members alive to do the mechanics properly.
The feasibility for solo play for Limited Job doesn’t work. FFXIV’s content is mostly designed to be played in a group. This was already set in stone back in ARR, and it took them 2 updates of Blue Mage to allow it to be doable in dungeons alone with the new spell added. Even then people rather play in a group. Even though you can solo the Level 61-70 dungeons and get the spell, it won’t mark on the Blue Mage Log, which brings back the point of not worth doing a solo dungeon experience other than for fun.
That aside nowadays there's plenty of content for players to do solo content, such as Deep Dungeons (Palace of the Dead & High on Heaven), Squadrons, Eureka (Not Including Baldesion Arsenal) and New Game +. These were perfect solo content, and the developers had a chance to implement Blue Mage into these content. However it did not happen, and the only solo content it has is Masked Carnival which is a glorified puzzle combat instance. I’ll go into more detail later, but for now let's focus more on the problems of Limited Jobs. The other solo activity is just doing dungeons and raids solo, but in my honest opinion it is not worth the time if I am not getting something out of it from an endgame standpoint.
Replaying Older content as Blue Mage
Adding replay value is key to almost any game regardless of the genre and most games have New Game+ or collectables making you coming back for more and more wanting to get that 100% completion. FFXIV does have a New Game+ mode, however Blue Mages can’t do that either. But they can still do the past content normal and savage raids and normal (ARR only), hard and extreme trials and dungeons. Even then the other classes that are 10 levels above which are the normal jobs are used much more often than not to replay these old content unsync just to get the loot which are Orchestrion Rolls, Primal materials for furniture/weapons/bardings, Primal specific tokens (ARR), trial specific mounts, trial specific weapons/accessories and raid specific mounts, armors, weapons, orchestrion rolls, raid materials and minions.
However this becomes an issue in raids and trials (Savage and Extreme respectively) when you’re doing them as a synced Blue Mage because from Heavensward onwards you need more than 3 people to solve the mechanics of the fights in extreme trials and a full party for savage raids. Not just that but even as an all Blue Mage party you will still have to do certain fight’s mechanics properly just like any normal party. Because nowadays most fights are mechanic heavy and doing a mechanic wrong could potentially wipe the entire party and this is in savage raids when you are synced. But that isn’t the main issue.
The main issue is that the developers claim it’ll be a unique experience to replay all of the old trials and raids as an all Blue Mage party. Which unfortunately it isn’t true and a perfect example of that is Brute Justice. Sure, you can skip phases but when it came to the Judgement mechanic people had to follow exactly like how normal parties did, except this time it is randomized as everyone’s role is a DPS. Brute Justice Mechanics was based on what role each player has. Tanks have the Min and Max HP judgement, Healers have Final Judgement 1 and 2, DPS would have Final Judgement 3 and Decree Nisi A and B. Because it was randomized clear communication was necessary and is key to clearing this encounter. Thankfully once you know who has what roles after your first wipe, it stays the same removing the randomised factor allowing your next attempts to be more easier. The same can be said for Omega 8 & 12 Savage.
Even with a glaring main issue of playing older content with an all Blue Mage party resulting in doing all of the boss mechanics as nearly identical as a normal party raid there is another smaller issue with it, once you have clear that encounter. Why touch it again? Most of the time once people obtain the achievements and spells from these instances they won’t ever redo unless they are helping a friend out or are mentor themselves willing to teach new players about the savage raids and extreme trials and most of them rarely help them with a synced run and prefer to do an undersized party run where their item level and character level is unaffected and they’ll still get a clear and rewards, just not the currency necessary to buy armor from vendors and most of the time its old currency that can be easily gain back. I’ll go into detail about it later.
This can also apply to the masked carnival which I will now transition into.
Masked Carnival
Masked Carnival is a Blue Mage exclusive content, it was fun while it lasted however as we are getting more updates for Blue Mage it already sets itself up to be disappointing. Let me explain, at first players had 25 stages to play with and with one time rewards, then we have 5 additional stages which didn’t add much but it was ok. Finally we arrive at Shadowbringers and they have only added in 1 stage and that is it and let me tell you it was boring and very disappointing, it was more of a normal fight rather than a puzzle or a challenge like the usual thing with most content which is learning the fight and just doing it.
Why replay old stuff at all?
The problem isn’t just the fact that we are getting less and less stages being added but the fact that this is a content island that again once it is done, why should I repeat it? Yes there are weeklies for it, however doing hunts, eureka, duty roulettes, deep dungeons give far more rewards on a daily basis while blue mages rewards are weekly and aren’t worth doing over and over again even with specific challenges applied to it. Poetics can be easily earned back and Alliance seals are pretty much useless now, as people can now fly in A Realm Reborn zones (or the Moogle Treasure Trove giving the riding maps), making most of the hunt rewards useless and there is no point in obtaining them(Other than the armor for glamour, minions, orchestrion rolls and furniture). Even with the Blue Mage exclusive rewards, why would you be bothered getting it? It is not as if it’ll impact how you’ll play in current tier content and it leads into another problem.
Unrelated but somehow indirectly related to another issue
Unrelated topic, Bozja got its relic update and my god was it so bad… if you wanted to do all of the steps here they are:
Step 1: Do Critical Engagement or ARR alliance raid for 15 Loathsome Memories of the Dying.
Be warned Critical engagement doesn’t guarantee a drop meaning running ARR alliance raid is a far better option. Each completion gives you 1 per run.
Step 2: Gather 18 Haunting Memories of the Dying and Vexatious Memories of the Dying.
To get haunting you can do HW alliance raids or Gyr Abania FATEs, while vexatious can be obtained through SB Alliance raid or Fates in Othard. Personally I would go with FATE Farming.
Step 3: Get 15 Timeworn Artifacts
To obtain it you can either do Palace of the Dead or Delubrum Reginae Bozja raid and both of them will guarantee a drop. Palace of the dead will be the faster option.
In all honesty and personal opinion, Steps 2 and 3 aren’t that bad. However Step 1 is horrible. But overall this is a terrible design to begin with as people tend to try and do things when it is first brought up and will try to clear it within a week of its release and eventually no one would touch it, however it would keep the old content barely alive. I get why they made the relic steps like this as it is to encourage players to play older content or Bozja to improve player engagement and make it easier for newer players to be matched up in the duty finder with the old alliance raids if they want to try it out for themselves. However this isn’t the first time that old content was mandatory for a quest step, when the story for 5.4 was out it was required for players new and old to complete the Crystal Tower alliance raid, I get why they did it and it is for player activity and the lore pertaining to the main story questline. However forcing players to do optional older content just to progress the main story quest line and other quests related to the use of older content is both a good and bad idea and this leads into another issue.
The Hype Engine
Everytime something new is launched, whether it be a new game or a very crucial update to a multiplayer game, hype is what drives people to try out the new content and it is similar to that of a coal train engine. Feed it more and the hype gets bigger and bigger hence why the general term ‘Hype train’ is being used often. For MMOs hype is a cycle, it comes and it goes but it also comes with adverse effects. With how FFXIV is doing it their model is basically players can sub freely whenever they want allowing them to take a break in between patches waiting for the next patch, which is good but at the same time it is bad.
Picture this 2 months after the recent update and new players begin to join and old players are returning from breaks, however the player base who already got their relic or blue mage spells are on a break. You can see how this is becoming a problem, it makes it harder for returning and newer players to catch up. If you miss the initial release of the content eventually it is slowly losing more active players to help out returning and new players. Yes there is a party finder, but during the initial release it took nearly 10mins at max for a party finder for blue mage to be filled to the brim. But 2 months later it takes from 30min minimum to 1hr or more to get a full Blue Mage party to do your Blue Mage Log or obtain spells from raids, dungeons and trials.
Limited Job relies on this hype engine too much, to the point where now it is nearly mandatory to participate the moment it is first out and quickly do it before the hype dies down and after that no one will ever touch it again leaving the players who came in late left behind to bite the dust.
Even then party finder is not the best solution, a much faster and reliable solution would be to allow Blue Mage to que with the duty finder, as most of the que times are 5 - 30 mins maximum depending on the content you're planning to do.
Many said that Limited Jobs should have its own roulette, I disagree, as it will be too chaotic because the dungeons are designed to have 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 DPS and if none of the Blue Mages have immediately picked up White Wind or Mighty Guard from the Totem NPC then we have a problem. Even if Beastmaster and Puppetmaster were to be added into the roaster, there would still be a problem because not everyone is going to be diligent in collecting every single thing immediately sometimes. Moving on…
Limited Job is just a content and a copycat of Normal Jobs but worse
Everyone already knew Limited Jobs are content in of itself, but that is the issue. Blue Mage is just a mini game with little to no replay value and with not a lot of rewards (exclusive rewards included). It hurts to see a job being treated in such a manner where it is degraded into a side content and honestly the way I see Blue Mage even before the 5.45 patch update, it has potential to be a normal job in group content and it still does. The content updates for blue mage recently has become dry and stale and the only major update we got is the spells and that is the only exciting thing to look forward to. Doing Omega raids which are Exdeath, Kefka and Omega (F&M) & final are fun but I’ll only do the raid once and never touch it again. For a content it is pretty bad especially now.
I am going to draw out a diagram so I can make it easier for everyone to understand. We have two houses one is called Normal Job while the other is Limited Job. Each of the jobs are residents living in their respective house alongside with its own furniture. The furniture is the content they provide. Think Limited Job as a broken shamble house with limits while the Normal Job as a always clean and updated house. Now, let's move Blue Mage from the Limited Job to Normal job while it's carrying its own furniture.
What you get is nearly the same as when it was a limited job but better as it can now contribute to the current content and do all activities normally with its own exclusive content. Let me explain.
Party Finder and Duty Finder are two different methods of gathering party members but their objective is the same. To get members for players while one method is automatic and the other is manual. If Blue Mage were given the DPS role, then that is ok. This is because some players tend to ignore learning spells from the overworld or altogether and if they want to they can simply pick a dungeon on duty finder and queue up for it and easily be categorised as a DPS. where it wouldn’t be much of a major inconvenience because the first spell they automatically get is Water Cannon which is the first DPS spell they learn. Same can be applied for Party Finder but more on the endgame area, where if Blue Mages want to tank, heal or DPS they can and they just have to ask the Party Finder leader. Obviously Blue Mages need more than 24 spells and all of the spells in the spellbook to be desirable, but that option can be left with players who want to dedicate their main job to be Blue Mage.
Another example would be allowing it into eureka, all of the normal jobs are allowed in Solo content like Deep Dungeons, Squadrons and Eureka. By allowing it to participate in these activities not only is it being treated like a normal job but there is plenty of reason why you would do these contents as a Blue Mage. Learning new and exclusive spells from them is a good reason as to why you should try this content out. However this update we didn’t get that. One thing I want to point out though is that Eureka and Squadron can be easily implemented, while Deep Dungeon will be somewhat difficult? Mainly because they have a ranking system for group and solo ranking boards, but honestly speaking they already have made a score board specifically for each job, meaning it could have been easily done for Blue Mage as well. Streamlining the process while group rankings will be left as is, because relying on Level 5 Death and Ultravibration is never a good idea especially when their cooldown is long and you’ll be constantly facing enemies most of the time in deep dungeon encounters.
On a related note, Ocean Fishing. Think of it like this: gathering classes have Diadem (Deep Dungeon), while Fisher has its own exclusive job content which is ocean fishing (Masked Carnival). Nobody got upset over that. The same can be said with Masked Carnival if Blue Mage were to be a normal job. It’ll have its own thing while other classes can’t participate in it and that is fine. Mainly because most of the time you’ll be spending your time doing duty roulettes, alliance and savage/normal raids weekly runs all of the time and most of your down time you’ll be either doing dungeons or AFK-ing in Limsa Lominsa.
Most of what I have just mentioned is basically Blue Mage can be a normal job regardless of the circumstances and making it a limited job was just either a bad execution or a poor take of Blue Mage in FFXIV. Honestly speaking I don’t know the developers intention but if I had to make a guess, the latter would be the most likely option because they are doubling down making it a solo experience content rather than a normal job.
Transition
Moving on from the glaring huge issues, I have previously mentioned it’s time we head to the argument points as to why it should stay as it is.
It is a unique experience
It never was, the only thing unique about it was learning new spells and doing masked carnival. If you were to participate in current tier raids as a Level 80 Blue Mage I can guarantee you people will choose the stay alive and consistent method rather than a method where 1 DPS sacrifices themselves risking the party a wipe or DPS loss just for the sake of making mechanics easier. Not just that but DPS checks are somewhat strict in savages and dying as a DPS can be bad unless you can handle it while you’re in a weakened state. Meaning if you were to do all of the old content, most of the time people would rather do the consistent method than you using Diamondback and cheesing it. Phase skipping is normal in MMO, it means as a group you have dealt a lot of damage to skip a phase and that in of itself is a reward Normal and All Blue Mage parties have the capabilities to do this, the requirement is that you being skilled in your job to actually do a phase skip and as well as having max item level with your preferred BiS.
People always use an all blue mage party for current tier content
If Blue Mage was Level 80, why would I try to run as an all Blue Mage party? Wouldn’t it be better to run 1 Blue Mage and 7 other jobs, as it’ll grant you the party bonus which increases stats by 5% for having a diverse party which is a lot better than having an all Blue Mage party, but not just that but a consistent method is needed and an all Blue Mage Party method is not going to be used often because players will choose to play different classes and you cannot force others to play as a Blue mage if they don’t want to. Meaning the majority will pick the general consensus of an all around party consistent method over an all Blue Mage party method because everyone has their own main job preferences.
It is why there is a High End Duty Finder and Party Finder. Should you want to do an all blue mage party, party finder is there for you, if you want to do a normal party composition party finder and High-end duty finder is there for you. Most of the time party finder groups would prefer a diverse amount of jobs over 1 single job and would say to go read up a guide on about the fight and an all Blue Mage party guide is more useless to the general public than a guide about how all jobs can do each of their roles properly. A general method is more consistent and will be used more often than a method that has specific requirements, and even then this points back to my previous point, most of the time the raid mechanic will be the same so really there's not much change other than the fact that the roles mechanic like judgement will be random.
People will que with one spell
Here is the thing, most of these Duty Roulette instances and raids have Item level and character level requirements as well as clear requirements. Wouldn’t it have been possible for the developers to create an action/spell requirement where in order to participate you need to have X amount of spells in order to participate, I mean they have clearly proved that with the Blue Mage’s quests where you have to learn specific spells in order to continue the quest. The same coding can be applied to the Duty finder except instead of specific spells, they need to have a certain amount of spells.
Blue Mage is an all in one role
From a technical standpoint no, it is categorised as a caster DPS even in the character profile page the job is under that category. But I can understand that it spells give it the versatility to become all 3 roles at once, but ask yourself this. Would any savage raiders want to sacrifice DPS for versatility? The only versatility that is useful is Angel Voice and White Wind, but why sacrifice 1 GCD just to heal everyone when that is the healer’s job to do. Healers don’t do as much damage as a DPS, but it is enough to contribute to the DPS. Angel Voice is understandable as sometimes people make mistakes and there is nothing wrong with that. However it has such a long cooldown to the point where I would prefer Summoner or Red Mage for both their DPS and versatility. As Summoner can easily recover their MP making it seem that using a resurrection is nothing. The other reason why Angel Voice has a long cooldown was to prevent the abuse of Final Sting, eventually they decided you cannot use final sting anymore within 10 minutes after casting it. The adjustments made for Aetherial Mimicry have advantages for certain spells under certain effects, improving the toolkit for tank and healer Blue Mage, however MP management is not as easy as before.
As for the tanking aspects of it, I highly not recommend it being a tank. Even with the new spells and mighty guard as well as the aethereal Mimicry:tank, it is so squishy a tank buster can potentially kill a Blue Mage if they aren’t immediately healed up or they fail to use diamondback in time (Let’s be honest as there’s a reason why we have swiftcast). In dungeons sure it can be powerful and with its new spells it brings a new type of tanking to the table, counterattack tanking. Chelonian Gate is the prime example of this not only it mitigates 20% of damage but if the damage dealt is equal to 30% of the Blue Mage’s Max HP it changes into Divine Cataract where it counters with a 500 potency aoe damage for the first enemy while 50% to the rest, this gets bumped up to 1000 potency if the blue mage has aetherial mimicry tank applied.
However the reason why it is powerful in a dungeon is because… it is casual content. It is not like savage and bosses HP are not as high as a Raid boss HP because doing dungeons is meant to be like doing a chore and you basically can screw up as many times as you want.
Blue Mage will overshadow the other DPS
No, it will not. This is because with their recent design philosophy of jobs where all jobs can now be viable in all content. This means even if Blue Mage was level 80, their DPS would be equivalent to Black Mage, Ninja or Machinist. Which in my opinion are the strongest dps of their own trade. Even then all jobs are equal to one another to the point where picking a job doesn’t matter unless it's the party bonus in that case, it’ll be the standard and one extra similar DPS.
Even without the philosophy I mentioned, with its current toolkit it will. However people will restrict it to 1 Blue Mage because of the LB penalty (Since people want LB for this expansion’s savage). As mentioned in this patch note for 2.1:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7af43f3c43828a
"When multiple characters are playing the same class/job in a party, the gauge for level 2 and level 3 limit breaks will now fill more slowly than before." Stated well and clear in the battle section under point 9.
This is mainly applied to Raid Finder where you cannot have the two of the same job queuing up together. Not just that there is a party buff for having 1 of each role. Tank, Healer, Melee, Range and Caster DPS. Totalling up to 5% party damage increase, miss a role and you lose 1%.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...6712a499e97484
“Party bonus effects have been adjusted. Players will now receive a 1% increase to strength, vitality, dexterity, mind, and intelligence for each unique role in their party, up to a maximum of 5%.”
You can see it as I put it up on screen.
(Show a Screenshot)
Roles are classified as follows:
Tank Gladiator / Paladin / Marauder / Warrior / Dark Knight / Gunbreaker
Melee DPS Pugilist / Monk / Lancer / Dragoon / Rogue / Ninja / Samurai
Physical Ranged DPS Archer / Bard / Machinist / Dancer
Magic Ranged DPS Thaumaturge / Black Mage / Arcanist / Summoner / Red Mage / Blue Mage
Healer Conjurer / White Mage / Scholar / Astrologian
They should balance it between the available casters for it to become an official job. However we could have a Caster DPS that is more in line with a mitigation and/or debuff toolkit.
In every update and expansion no matter what MMO, there will always be a meta. However you don’t have to strictly follow that meta, which is why FFXIV developers decided to make all jobs viable for raiding and looking at the new spells none of them make Blue Mage look too powerful to the point it overshadows other classes.
Also with the recent update other than Ultravibration, the spells that have been added doesn’t make Blue Mage overpowered if anything it adds more spells to its arsenal that can be used in various situations. In fairness they now have spells that have the potency on par with some of Black Mages spells which have a 30 second cooldown timer, while theirs is a long cooldown timer more than 30 seconds. I believe at this point Blue Mage is a Burst DPS rather than a consistent damage dealing DPS, so its counterpart to Black Mage. Which is fine, as it’ll add more variety to the job pool for players to play with in the current tier raids.
If it becomes a normal job it’ll lose some of its content
Honestly, ask yourself this question. Why would any game developer remove content from the game that has already been implemented… (Looks at Bungie with Destiny Content Vault) I mean… Why would most developers wouldn’t want to remove their content from their game that is already included? Well… it meant as in the effort they have put into it will be a waste of time and resources invested into something that is permanently gone and from a business point of view, that is a wasted sunken cost and nobody would love that. It all goes back to my point about Limited Job is more of a bad copycat version of the normal job system. Blue Mage can pick up everything it has and bring it over to the normal job spectrum. This is because Masked Carnival, the achievements, Blue Mage log are not dependent on the Limited Job system. It is why I used the housing analogy in the first place, Blue Mage content doesn’t rely on any system. Whether it be limited or normal it isn’t codependent on a system, therefore moving its resources to the normal job spectrum and making it part of the normal job system nothing gets removed, everything will stay there spells included. Will there be nerfs and adjustments? Yes, however I am willing to take that compromise if it means for Blue Mage to be a normal job.
Another compromise by some is that there should be two versions of Blue Mage. Limited and Normal. Limited is self explanatory, while the normal is skills with glamour skills (Like Egi glamours).
Learning Blue Magic via Quests is not Blue Mage
Getting skills from completing the Blue Mage job quests should not reward you new skills. That much is a given. However there is another way to bypass this. I don’t know you if you guys know this but… DID YOU KNOW? That nearly some quest MSQ or Side have some sort of combat within them as the requirement to progress further into the quest? Shocking I know! Now apply it to Blue Mage and what we get is the option for people to learn Blue Magic through the mobs itself within the quest. Here’s a video of that quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPIU...hannel=Okamoza
When I did my quest, this mob can teach you Drill Cannon. The quest didn’t reward me Drill Cannon, I learnt it from the mob. Unfortunately the video I provided doesn’t show you that, when I can I’ll try to get a clip of it. Keep in mind it is still a chance drop so even if the mob did it, it's not guaranteed to learn drill cannon.
For those that are going to say “BUT YOU NEED TO GET HIT BY THE ATTACK!!!” You don’t, we are not following FFV rules, rather we’re following FFVI Blue Mage’s rules where as long as we see it and it has been casted we can learn it so long as we’re still alive at the end of the combat. If you’re KOed you don’t learn it. To also address the Mist Dragon, Cold Fog issue. You need to hit the mists in the middle of the room when the three dragon heads appear and only need 1 person to hit it, because apparently the mist form counts as a separate mob. So you don’t need to get hit by it, just kill the dragon heads quickly and have 1 Blue Mage hit the mist form and guarantee at the end of the boss fight (As long you’re synced) you learn Cold Fog.
It’ll ruin the dungeon experience
Unfortunately it is past that point now, as the dungeon meta as of right now is mass pulling from one group of mobs to the next group of mobs until the mid boss and the process rinse and repeats itself. This is the current dungeon meta, why do you care if Blue mage is in it? Hell, if anything it’ll be a boon especially since they have 2 instant group death skills. One of which has a specific requirement and is a 50/50 chance and the other is a guarantee so long the enemy is not resistant to Deep Freeze.
To add more, the group of mobs are separate into 2 part within a hallway and this is really obvious with SB and ShB’s dungeon where you can mass pull until you hit a wall where you need to kill your currently pulled mobs in order to progress forward and this is done twice. Back then before this players mass pulled mobs because they just wanted to rush the dungeon and I don’t blame them. I mass pull all the time as a Tank in Duty Roulette and the Healer went along with me as I put down my mitigation cd and they spam their aoe and keep me topped up. Basically mass pulling is a requirement now in the general public duty roulette, and if you can’t do it. SAY IT. People cannot read other people’s mind, if you cannot mass pull as a healer or tank say it so that the other party members know that you’ll be pulling smaller groups.
But more importantly why do you care about trash mobs? People tend to ignore it and do it because it is a chore for them and they just want the weekly currency for that week which is 450 limit per week. Boss wise? Of course they’re powerful, there is a reason why they are categorized as a caster DPS and not in a separate category of its own. They mainly have DPS skills, 6/2/2. DPS, Tank, Healer respectively. That's the makeup of the majority of the skillset and now we have skills that require players to be in a certain role to make certain skills stronger.
They’re Overpowered
I’ll go through the skills to tell which are and how they are not.
Diamondback - It's something akin to Hallowed Ground, but it is not categorised as such? Simply put it’s a defensive mitigation and Hallowed Ground is a pure immunity shield and certain attacks can pierce through it. Diamondback has a weakness, It gets cancelled if you get knocked back or pulled in. Honestly most bosses do that now and why would you diamondback a dungeon boss even with their tank buster. Dungeons are casual content so really you will not die from 1 tankbuster, it was made easy so that healers can heal you up when they can. Even trust NPCs can heal you quickly enough after a tank buster and without mitigation.
Another fun fact, you stand still when you activate this ability and you cannot cancel it manually or move. This means when a mechanic requires you to move you’re stuck there risking a party wipe and not just that but you’ll get a vulnerability stack for taking damage. Remember when I said it is not like the Tank’s usual last resort mitigation? Yeah you can get a vulnerability stack when you use diamondback as you are still taking damage because it only mitigates 90% of it. Meaning if that 10% hits you gain 1 stack of vulnerability. I know this because Masked Carnival Stages 25, 30 and 31 give you a vulnerability stack if you take damage from the bosses’ aoe attacks. Go ahead and Diamondback Charybodis, you get hit and take damage and a vuln stack. What about Gogo Thunder? You’ll still get it. Even if you Gobskin yourself without the healer mimicry, you’ll still get it. The only reason why you didn’t get the vulnerability stacks in raids is because other members used Gobskin (All Blue Mage and the healer mimicry on two or one blue mage.) or Shield spells from White Mage (Divine Benison), Scholar (Nearly every healing action they do) or Astrologian (Nocturnal Sect).
How to nerf it? Reduce the mitigation from 90% to 30 - 50% at best. Keep the timer to stand still and keep the MP cost.
White Wind - It is only powerful if the user can cast it before the raid wide aoe and pretimed the heal so that it registers the HP before the raid-wide aoe and heals exactly the Max HP after the raid wide aoe. Aka this maneuver is hard to consistently pull off. Even without this advanced technique it is still strong. But it is because it’s meant to be like medica but with a stronger potency, so saying that it is overpowered is moot since it is doing its job which is healing the party. Guess what, there is something even better now, Stotram and without the mimicry it is a weak AoE Damage. With the Healer Mimicry it becomes exactly like Medica without the extreme MP cost and at that point White Wind will be used more like Benediction, Lustrate/Excogitation, Essential Dignity. Which they are used after a Tankbuster or in casual content the ‘Oh Shit’ button, the panic button for when a tank took too much damage. In either case, a Blue Mage would take both, one for MP management and the other as a when it is necessary to heal immediately.
To fix it? Change the formula to… Heal = (HP/7)*2. The formula I am showing is what FFXI used for their version of white wind and it still uses current HP.
DPS skills AoE and Single Targets - Well… isn’t that the whole point of these Strong powerful DPS skills with long cooldowns? Not just that, but DPS are meant to have these strong AoE and Single Target attacks. It is their role to deal damage. There's plenty to go about, however I’ll pick out the one that is key to the argument at hand.
Basic Instinct only makes solo dungeon content doable and unsynced raids (Normal and outdated savages) and trials (Hard and unsynced duties) doable. It also only works when you’re alone. I remember a reddit post saying that they dealt 1204836 with Final Sting against Ravana, if that was EX that would be equivalent to 75% of his health credit to /uBluesDS. However there is an issue… Was this Ravana Hard or Extreme? Cause they both have different levels, Was this unsynced? If so it can explain the numbers because a level 70 vs a Level 53 or a level 60 can deal a lot more damage because their stats is higher than the recommended Duty’s level and item level.
Final Sting and Self-Destruct - Are they OP? Yes in terms of damage, are they viable? Yes for a final push. Should I use them midway of a raid/fight? No… because there is now a 10minute persisting debuff that after you that move you cannot use moves similar to a suicide attack. Even after you wipe, the debuff persists meaning the move is no longer abusable unless you leave the duty. If it was Duty Finder, it basically means you’ll be punished for leaving a duty midway. If it was in a static group, it doesn’t matter since it only affects you and your static members since they have agreed to it (If they have given their consent). Plus it wouldn’t be wise to leave after getting to the checkpoint (Savage only) unless you can easily get to it.
The original poster claims that this makes Blue Mage OP and shouldn’t be a normal job especially in the overworld. Where I have to disagree. Basic Instinct effect only activates when you are in a duty that requires 2 or more people and you are in there alone. Meaning that it is useless in the overworld and why would anyone pick final sting or self destruct? If you’re going to do overworld content you’re better off using something large aoe spells that can be easily spammed to tag monsters with.
Not just that there is one key thing many people forget about. FATEs have their own automatic scaling adjustments. Let me explain, back in ARR people were having problems of FATEs being killed too quickly and not many could reach it. So the developers came up with a solution and a good one at that. The FATEs will automatically adjust to how many people previously participated and the next time it appears again it would have either been buffed or nerfed depending on the number of players that participated. Thanks to some users discussing it on the forums back in 2015 when it was originally implemented during ARR.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/236318
This makes it seem why Blue Mage is OP in overworld FATEs, because the FATEs haven't been touched in a long while and if a Blue Mage comes in obviously they are going to destroy a FATE with a previous participation of 5 or less people. But with 15+ the FATEs will scale up to adjust to that and Blue Mage is no longer OP in the overworld because the mobs HP has been adjusted to fit a lot of player participation. If you’re thinking about instant killing the boss, fat chance you’ll get a bronze medal for doing that and really it is a waste of time at that point when gold participation FATEs rewards more than bronze or silver participation rewards. Yes you can Missile/Missiles Launcher them but that just shows you have poor player etiquette and really you’re being a bit rude doing that, but it is ok to use them when there's not a lot of people doing FATEs and frankly there's no reason to do FATEs unless you’re doing it for a relic. Even then why argue about FATEs? Barely anyone is doing them because there are better levelling sources than FATEs now, 1-60 PotD, 61-71 HoH and finally 71-80 Bozja. Also the new 5.45 Relic step is FATEs the items that drops from FATEs are now chance based and the guaranteed drop is from the alliance raids. So if anything there is no point in doing FATEs anymore, people would still do the chance for drop but personally I would take running 15 Alliance raids runs for the memories. Since I am planning on getting all of the weapons, I have to run CT 255 times and I finally got it and I had to run a lot of Delubrum Reginae for the augmented bozjan relic weapons.
Their versatility is strong, that is a given. However it is what makes Blue Mage stand out from the rest of the crowd of jobs. They can be anything if given the spells. However I would like to stop you there and let you imagine them running a Duty Finder. They are already categorised as a caster DPS, so why would versatility be a problem? Normal Raids, Hard trials and Dungeon content are not high stress activities and they are just duties where every player can chill and relax. Savage Raids, Ultimate Raids and Extreme Trials are the ones with high stress, though Trials isn’t that difficult so its the lowest stress inducing one while the other 2 are and most of the time required extensive knowledge of the fight. Not just that but it would be unwise for a Blue Mage to go in unprepared and I believe a tutorial/help text should be made for Blue Mage before they queue up for duty finder just so they know that it is recommended they try and get the easiest spells before participating in these high end duties. However for these High end content there is a better method to recruit for players, Party Finder. This is where people can talk to one another and ask questions before allowing them to join. It shouldn’t be an issue if a player asks a Blue Mage if they have gotten most of their crucial spells for the high end content and if they don’t they simply won’t allow them in and that is fine. It is the party leader’s right to deny players who don’t fit into the criteria. Honestly it’s the Blue Mage’s fault for not getting ready and that is fine it means either they can play the other jobs they have levelled or they can try and obtain all of the other spells. That is for DPS as Blue Mage, imagine Tanking and Healing as a Blue Mage. For Duty finder that’s a no go, but for a party finder? That's A-ok, the reason being is that people can pick and choose the job they want to join their party not just that but people don’t mind overall as long there is clear communication between party members.
I would also like to go back to my point where players would que as an all Blue Mage Party and you can’t. This is coming from an experienced perspective, but if you fucked it up on a mechanic on savage especially on 4, 8, 12 for Omega or Eden. It's a guaranteed wipe. All of their mechanics require 8 people to complete it. If one person is dead during the mechanic either everyone will take massive damage or in E8S Shiva’s case with Light Rampant and Icelit you immediately wipe. Which all goes back in a circle of, why would you try and cheese it when doing it normally is better in the long run since it is far more consistent and adaptable than a specific strategy with specific conditions.
In conclusion they are not overpowered and the perception of them being overpowered is just power fantasy gibberish because all classes are just as powerful. Paladin, being one the most tankiest class to easily mitigate damage. Warriors and their ability to fully heal themselves with
their own abilities and back to full health without a healer’s help.
(Confession time, We were at the mother porxie boss and our healer died and the DPS can’t resurrect the healer and no one can heal, so… I self healed myself as a warrior and healed my other party members (NIN and BLM) and cleared the encounter. Literally beating the boss without a healer. Not just that but the tank busters in Savage? I can easily heal them back up without benediction and the healers trusted me and I did heal back up quickly. You think Blue Mage is overpowered? Look at warriors! THEY ARE STRONG.)
Dark Knight and its ability to heavily mitigate while dealing tons of damage. Gunbreaker… They heal themselves or their allies and can still mitigate while doing a strong combo attack. Monk recently got buffed and now is the strongest melee DPS with no downtime. Dragoon, Samurai are just as strong on their own merits. Ninja is by far the strongest Melee DPS because it has its own version of off-guard, Trick Attack. Bard… they provide buffs and I mean… they aren’t that strong but if given with the right player who knows the Job inside out guaranteed it’ll be a strong class. Machinist A selfish DPS damage dealer, and that is a compliment because it is a strong range DPS. Dancer is also a strong DPS in my opinion. Sure it is not as strong as the other jobs but that's because they are buffing their partner’s damage and every 2 mins they are buffing the party. Their damage is half constant and half burst but they are still strong, they just need to remove the RNG factor or at least buff it. Black Mage, a glass cannon… Do I need to say more? Summoner, A very versatile caster, does a lot of damage and they can easily resurrect other party members. Red Mage, not as strong as a Black Mage but it is versatile still and in capable hands it can be a strong DPS with resurrection.
So why list all of these jobs? Because each of them have their own unique strengths that can make them overpowered depending who is the wielder. Think of this analogy, Job are the Tools, while the players are the builders. If the building crumbles it's not the tool’s fault (Job in this case are unbreakable tools unless the developers did something that makes the job unplayable), it's the builder's fault. Meaning in capable hands players can succeed. Here is a video my friend showed me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2IgENch12g
They had great mitigation and they took 0 damage, literally… skills, teamwork and knowledge = Overpowered Normal team composition. In a sense all of those comprises a good team and a fast and easy clear regardless of what jobs and when Blue Mage is added into the normal job mix I can certainly say that it’ll be business as usual.
Transition 2
We’re now going to head in deeper into the past about how Blue Mage was first developed. I have taken the trouble to rewatch the twitch stream of the initial release of Blue Mage.
Limited Jobs
The Dev’s reasoning
Letter from the Producer LIVE XLVII | FINAL FANTASY XIV Fan Festival 2018 in Las Vegas -
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/3381851...=all&sort=time
1:18:43 “So you may be familiar with this because I have mentioned it during interviews in the past, but my thinking of what makes Blue Mage very unique is that you learn moves or actions from monsters and then you collect those different moves and then you utilise those moves in battle. Those are the 3 major distinguishing points for me”
They are and they are also the key things of what makes a Blue Mage a Blue Mage over the FF series. However I would like to list out all of the examples available to this day.
The rules of learning Blue Magic in FFV
Having the ability ‘Learning’ to learn blue magic from enemies; Be a Blue Mage (For its innate ability ‘Learning’; Have the ‘Learning’ ability equipped into the ability slot (If your character’s current class is not Blue Mage). Job mastery of Blue Mage, for Mimes and Freelancers to gain the ability ‘Learning’ as an innate ability. Be hit by the Blue Magic Spell. Be alive at the end of the battle, you can raise and still learn before the battle ends.
FFVI instead of a job, it is a job for a character known as Strago Magus.
When he sees a certain ability being used he can learn it, only downside is that he cannot learn it if he is under any of these status effects. KO, Blind, Petrify, Zombie, Sleep, Confuse, Stop, Freeze or Rage. Another character that can do something like this is Gau, however he learns Blue Magic through his Rage and from there on the players cannot control him and will use spells randomly.
FFVIII the character Quistis Trepe knows Blue Magic but as a Limit Break. Limit Break has a very low chance of appearing when a character’s HP is around 25%, however the lower the HP the higher the chance of it appearing. Also there is a spell and an item that helps improve the odds significantly, which is Aura and Aura Stone respectively, Aura can also be granted from a Crisis Level 3 or 4 Mighty Guard. With those Spells and items their crisis level points dramatically increase by 200, allowing them to immediately use Limit Break without the need of being in Critical HP or have status Ailments. Limit Break is also determined by the Crisis Level, it raises by lower HP, number of character KOs, more status ailments they are afflicted with. However they cannot use it when they are afflicted with Curse (Or in a specific case where they are in Ultimecia’s Castle).
There are 4 Crisis Level, in Quistis Trepe case some Blue Magic have stronger potency; more buffs applied at Crisis Level 4 (Mighty Guard); LV4 (Crisis Level 1), LV3 (CL2), LV2 (CL3), LV1 (CL4); Take more HP away with gravity based spells up to 93.75%; Gives more debuffs to an enemy (Acid or Bad Breath) at Crisis Level 4.
In order for her to learn certain enemy abilities the player has to use a special item that is obtained through winning a battle, finishing a subquest, modifying cards etc.
FFIX Quina Quen is a character that learns enemy abilities by eating it in order to learn Blue Magic abilities.
‘Eat’ is an ability the character can use to learn abilities from enemies instantly killing the enemy that has been targeted as long they are below 25% HP.
FFX Kimahri Ronso, a character that can learn Blue Magic spells from certain enemies as long he uses ‘Lancet’ on them which enables him the chance to learn the ability from the monster and in the game Blue Magic is called Ronso Rage.
FFX-2 The Gun Mage dressphere, it has an ability called Blue Bullet. It is the same thing as Blue Magic, but can only be learned individually and the party member has to be hit by it.
FFXI It is an advanced job that learns an ability or spell from an enemy. However it needs to casted in order for a Blue Mage to learn the spell. There are also a few more requirements, Blue Mage has to be set as a main job; they don’t have to be targetted or hit by the spell; You need to have a minimum skill level in Blue Magic to learn spells (maximum is 424 without additional stats from gear); They need to have the minimum job level of Blue Mage to use certain spells at certain levels. They are also known to be Tanks or Damage Dealers often, while they can also be Support. Also there are certain spells that a mob from the same family can use but you won’t learn it, this is because SE is being SE you can learn the spell from this monster from the family but not from another despite them being able to cast the same spell since it is in their ability list and from the same family of monsters. Most of the spells are obtained through overworld, sometimes a small portion of them are obtained through specific battlefields, like Vagary, Delve, Wildskeeper Reives, Skirmish, Azyul Isle Investigation and a few other instances.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Blue Mage is a hume exclusive job and they wield sabers. In order for them to learn abilities they have to be hit by the skill from the enemy.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Similar to Tactics Advance they have to be struck successfully by the enemy with the ability and must have their learning ability equipped.
Final Fantasy Explorers. It is an unlockable job after defeating 750 monsters. It learns by seeing the move and then killing the enemy. They are also known to be good tankers, boosters, debuffers and damage dealers.
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. The character Fina becomes a Blue Mage in the third season and only learns Blue Magic through story progression.
Brevery Default Series, Vampire and Catmancer. In order to learn monster abilities the party members need to be hit by the ability.
FFXIV’s Blue Mage. In order to learn spells from enemies these requirements must be met. The enemy needs to have fully casted the spell; You have to be alive until the end of the battle. This is the overworld and instanced duty way of learning blue mage spells. The other way is to learn from Whalaqee Totems. Some parts may be similar to FFV’s Blue Mage, however it is not identical as in FFV you have to be hit by the Blue Magic while in FFXIV you don’t have to be hit by it instead you have to ‘see’ after it has been casted. This is more akin to VI (to see the enemy cast the ability), VIII (Learn Blue Magic through items), FFXI (Just needs to see it), Final Fantasy Explorers (Learn it by seeing it).
FFXIV’s Blue Mage isn’t an implementation of FFV’s Blue Mage rather it is an implementation of Blue Mages Overall. In fact I would go as far to say it is almost similar to how Blue Mages work in FFXI. With that in mind let us move on.
1:19:20 “With some of these monster moves or actions some of them might break the balance of the game and that’s what makes it so fun and interesting if you look at the originally referenced of Final Fantasy 5 and some of the moves that are learned there. You would see what I mean.”
The only reason why Blue Mage breaks games in the past series is because most of it was turn based combat and it was single player. It is a fun class to use to break a game. However FFXI did it wonderfully, making a playable class in FFXI. Broken? Possibly, but broken to the point it breaks the game? That would be Summoner’s job and Blue Mage can do it in the right player’s hands. Every job in FFXI is broken if you know the ins and outs of the job without referring to a guide.
Why Final Fantasy 5 only? There is more than 1 iteration of Blue Mage whether it be by classes or by characters. Final Fantasy 11 did it and it didn’t break the game and people are playing various jobs or asking for 1 Blue Mage in their party and people loved it. It didn’t break the balance of the game and people can bring up the points it did, but if you play it now a variety of jobs have been chosen rather than just a meta. FFXI did have Level 5 Death or instant death moves, but it didn’t affect bosses and we already have an example here with the current tier raids where we cannot instant kill the bosses. I’ll go into detail a little later.
“Say for example, we're in a party that goes into raids for the mmorpg lets yokozawa is the blue mage and yoshida is the party leader and we're all like "Oh yeah let's go into Alphascape savage turn 4" So I will ask yokozawa "Yokozawa you learn the move bad breath right?" (yokozawa) "I don't have it" (Yoshida) "What? Go and fight some morbols right now!" Then kicked out of the party. Joking aside if we're to seriously consider implementing the blue mage as a job that is added to a party then that's exactly what would happen since this being an MMORPG.”
While I do have to agree to a certain degree where this sort of scenario can happen, I have to disagree since it is the player’s/Blue Mage’s responsibility to learn their spells before joining up on a duty with other players via duty roulette or party finder. Yes it would happen, however Free companies, Novice Networks and helpful players help prevent this sort of situation from happening far too often. This even happens when a player doesn’t even learn their job (Normal jobs) properly. And let me emphasise that MMOs were originally a way for other people to communicate with each other through online means in a virtual setting/world.
There is a drastic solution to prevent this: Reveal everything in the Blue Mage spell book; tell people which specific mobs; what spells are meant for quests and where to find the spell. The discovery part will be gone, no doubt about it but here is the kicker. We have a wiki page dedicated to telling people where and what mob gives the spells. So in other words, just show it instead of making it a discovery thing. The other is to remove the RNG factor of the learning of spells making it so when the enemy does it once, it is guaranteed you will learn the spell. I mean look at FFXI, they made an armor that increases the chances of you learning Blue Mage near to a 100% it is called ‘Assimilator’s bazubands +3’. It makes spell collecting in FFXI a lot more easier and RNG wasn’t an issue with it, if a previous MMO did that, what makes you think learning + RNG is a good thing? Here is another issue that can be caused inadvertently. I have seen a lot of people trying to get Tingle and Triple Trident. Party or no, the traffic there is a lot during its initial release and I was lucky enough to steal a mob before other parties could and get it and I got it within 2 Namazu kills. But that is the thing, if the devs want to make it easier for players to participate as a Blue Mage normally, then just get rid of the RNG factor.
Another example, Yoshida is the blue mage and i've gone all and learned all of the monster actions and I go to yokozawa to ask him "Hey yokozawa san may I be in your party? I'm ready, we go." And then you go into alphascape Omega F & M show up and then Blue Magic: LEVEL 5 DEATH!. Dead... You guys might be ok with this as well, but the dev team asks the development team. When that happens do we consider adding some sort of restriction on certain bosses will not be able to apply level 5 death or have raid content where you're killing a boss one shot and so do we consider making a restriction on blue mage cannot enter certain raid content, then that kinda takes the fun out of utilising blue mage.”
As for raids we can already see that raid bosses are immune to the instant death spell, so their reasoning during the stream was for nothing, and were over exaggerated when they were live. Not just that we have Omega M/F to fight against, and Level 5 Death or Deep freeze for Ultravibration doesn’t work on them. Not being able to use Instant kill moves on bosses doesn’t take the fun out of utilising with Blue Mage. I mean it's not even a restriction when the bosses can resist the attack so… over the past 2 updates the statement made back then was more or less just over exaggeration.
Losing the fun is more of a community problem where people will take the meta and learn it religiously and then possibly force down the player's throats saying that this is the best way to do it. Well we already have a solution… It is called word of mouth and blacklisting. We have discord and word travels fast in between the FFXIV community and in game we have a function to blacklist a certain players, blocking them from ever sending tells to us or ever seeing them as well as join their party finder groups meaning we can just blacklist them and never ever have to party up with them ever again, until you remove them from your blacklist. If you want to have fun utilising Blue Mage then you would rather form a static that play Blue Mage but on a fun scale where it doesn’t matter if they have made progression or not and that is one way of having fun, the problem with that is that the game is full of content (old content included) that why should I do Blue Mage, when I can do Relics (For glamour); Dungeons and raids that drop mounts and minions and sometimes great glamour; Trials that reward mounts and when all 6 are collected you get the expansion’s special mount; Alliance raid with stories; Fishing Log and Ocean Fishing; Crafting and Gathering for Ishgardian restoration; Duty Roulettes; Savage Raids and Extreme trials; Ultimate Raids; Deep Dungeon; Bozja; Gold Saucer/Triple Triad/Mahjong & plenty more; Squadrons and many other content that can potentially award me a lot of stuff whereas Blue mage right now is only rewarding me 6 unique titles worthwhile getting (Savage All blue Mage Clear and Perfect Boss stage of Masked Carnival) and 1 Mount and 1 Minion and a currency which can be easily gained through daily activities rather than a weekly activity.
And so with those examples in mind I would answer in my interview saying that " because of these reasons it is difficult to implement something like a blue mage in final fantasy 14 but that was up until now. But around the world, everybody would ask when are we getting blue mage? When are we getting blue mage? I want to become a blue mage! If that is the case so the three points raise earlier enjoying the process of learning monster moves and then collecting those moves that you have learned from your monsters and so the two other points collecting those moves from the monsters and utilising those moves in a battle those 3 points had to be fulfilled in my mind and so we were able to achieve that and bring out the uniqueness of final fantasy 14. It took us about a year of preparations and we finally have the blue mage implemented so that is the thinking and concept behind calling limited jobs so I hope you understand. But by having this sort of limited job i think it opens up possibilities for considering more traditional final fantasy jobs that may not necessarily be a perfect fit for MMORPGs”
As for their reasoning about Limited Jobs, I have to strongly disagree as limited jobs don't open possibilities up. It restricts them, mainly because you’re aren’t fully exploring them in all current and future content. Rather it is looking back on old content and where the wasted potential is. Players do play the old stuff from time to time, but not as often as the current content. However limited to just working on past content in all honesty is a waste of time especially when people want more content for the normal jobs. Great, we have more content for gatherers and crafters, but what about combat classes, we’re getting bozja but really who likes it? I have all of the augmented relics, but that doesn’t mean I love the content. So really it would be more beneficial to both players and developers if Blue Mage worked as a Normal Job because more of the work and resources can be devoted and focused on more new content for the normal job rather than a specific group of jobs that will be lagging behind.
People asked for Blue Mage to be a normal job since it was originally planned to be a normal job back in 1.0 and a lot of fans were really excited about it. You can still achieve the three defining features of a Blue Mage even when it is a normal job when you think about it. If they wanted to make it unique to FFXIV they should have at least made a job gauge to go with it and from there they can slowly balance the class itself. As for the Limit Break, it is a Caster DPS meaning just give it a Caster DPS Limit Break is fine for it, it doesn’t need to have a Healer or Tank limit break it can be done without it because none of those 3 key points emphasise Blue Mage being all 3 roles at once. As for it fitting into traditional roles in MMORPG think carefully, it is a Caster DPS so it’ll fulfill it role in a duty finder, party finder if the manual ver. Of it meaning it can still fulfill its role as a tank or healer in a traditional sense however it cannot Limit Break meaning the other tank or healer has to do it and that isn’t an issue unless it's an all Blue Mage party.
Blue Mage and Beast Master are considered Traditional jobs, but FFXI manages to fit it into their own game. Why can’t FFXIV do the same? Two different games with two different engines, that I understand however I believe FFXIV can make a Normal Job BeastMaster as it’ll be just as similar to that of summoner. However the reason why they don’t want to do it is because the summoner and scholar's pet system isn’t perfect. No matter what you do your summon’s attacks are delayed which isn’t good especially if their attacks are now on your global cooldown. Probably they won’t add beastmaster or puppet master in just yet, until they resolve the issue with summoner and scholar.
As for implementing the jobs. Beastmaster already has a system to go off of and it's the egi, it isn’t perfect but at least you can bring it in normally alongside puppetmaster. Does it have to be the same beasts as FFXI? It doesn’t have to be, you can make your own like Mandy the mandragora or Kars the Chimera. We have tiger mobs, but it doesn’t have to necessarily be the same name and stat from FFXI. Make your own beasts for FFXIV, come up with something unique.
The three key things of a Blue Mage he wants to see is, Learn moves or actions from monsters; Collect those Different moves; Utilise those moves in battle. Is it doable without limited jobs? It is, simply put, not every spell will be used in every situation especially when we only have a limit of 24 slots meaning we cannot use all of the spells in one encounter. Plus overtime certain spells will be ignored in favor of better spells. Every spell fits different situations. If a spell isn’t picked often that is fine we have over 104 spells now so pick whatever you feel is needed for the situation.
Time has changed and at this time (Patch 5.45) I believe they have somewhat changed their perspective overall but at a level where they are not abandoning it outright but barely keeping it alive. I’ll repeat what I have said in both the English and Japanese FFXIV forums. “Give up on Limited Jobs, it has never worked both in theory and in practice.” However the devs still double down on it to be solo content. Which will never work outside of a dungeon solo play. Because Extreme trials and Savage Raids are heavy mechanic fights that it is impossible to do it alone. Even when they added Basic Instinct, all it did was made solo dungeon doable but not overpowered. Most of the new spells don't even make them that broken even in grouplay. DPS wise maybe, however I doubt that mainly because fights are now separated into phases and when you hit a certain percentage bosses disappear from the encounter or become untargetable. I’ll also bring it back again that you cannot even cheese the savage fights. They are mechanic specific fights that if you mess up once its an immediate wipe. So they are clearly viable for grouplay and there are achievements for it to do Savages as a group. At this point it is better off to abandon Limited Job as a whole and make it into a Normal Job. Getting only 1 masked carnival per update? It's just not enough to say I will do Blue Mage again. Back to a previous point I said, it is far more beneficial if there is only one category type of jobs as to ease the workload of the developers and dedicate more resources to something that can make players enjoy the current tier of content.
Many I know people share the same sentiment as I have. They want Blue Mage to be a normal job, but at this point of time they’re holding onto that hope or just giving up and playing a different game. Honestly I would have abandoned FFXIV long ago, but I don’t want to and it's not because I have a large house to upkeep. It is because I love the game to bits and it was the MMO that taught me how to play MMOs in general and I rather criticise and help it rather than outright abandoning the game. Playing MMOs is like a special relationship you play and enjoy and you are having a great time with both what the developers made and you enjoying it.
I am not telling them to give up limited jobs out of spite, I am telling them that because there is no more reason to invest/sink money into something you’re not going to try and put in as much effort into. Cause Patch 5.45 shows how much they really care about masked carnival and Blue Mage. So at this point you may as well make it into a Normal Job and let it participate in normal content and it’ll still be a fresh experience because you’re playing it as a normal job.
Conclusion
For those who made it to the end, I am truly grateful for you hearing my side of Blue Mage out. As many would consider my opinion as an unpopular one. As much as I ramble on about Blue Mage I truly do care for both the class and the game as it was one of the first I experienced during ARR. That being said, my thoughts about the class itself to this date.
The current iteration of Blue Mage in of itself was a mistake, it was fine at the start but now it has begun to spiral downhill and at this point with 5.45 it should be just a normal job cause the new spells doesn’t make it broken, especially now that tanking, healing and DPS now share the same cooldown timer. Not just that but raids recently is more punishing (Savage only) when you do not follow the mechanics or when you did them wrong. Not just that but DPS check is tight. Adding Blue Mage to the normal job roaster will allow players who want to raid as a Blue Mage to play however they want in their static. Duty Finder, I believe the casual content (Not Extreme and Savage content) isn’t really that punishing and Blue Mage being part of the duty roulette is fine because there is nothing serious about the casual raids, trials or dungeons. Even if it were to be High end duty finder, I still think there should be at least X amount of spell requirements needed before being able to participate in such high end activities with strangers.
I hope that new, casual, hardcore and veteran FFXIV players understand where I am comming from as I am somewhat a mix between casual and hardcore. I enjoy the game and I really do, but with the current patch it is just looking grim for me and I hope 5.5 brings in something exciting with the Nier Automata Alliance Raid.
If you have a disagreeing point or need some clarification, please go ahead and comment down in the comment section. I'll try to reply to you when I can.
With that being said I just hope one day the developers would hear me out or at least acknowledge what I have said in this video or forums since they used to listen to the community very often back in the ARR days.
Thank you for watching and I hope to see you in 5.5 or in endwalker with the hope of Blue Mage being a normal job finally in 6.0.
Unused uncut from the video
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Refined ver.
Introduction
During ARR a new job was added in the fray during the raiding scene, Ninja. It nearly put most static in chaos trying to regear and changing some strats to include Ninja as it is a very powerful DPS at the time (It still is).
Then came Heavensward, three new jobs were added, one for each role. Astrologian as a healer; Dark Knight as a Tank; Machinist as DPS. Three new exciting jobs that make people play their own role in a new way in raids, trials and dungeons.
Then came Stormblood, during this time I had to tend to important life matters but it was when they released two new DPS but in different categories. Samurai as a melee DPS and Red Mage as a caster DPS.
Finally we arrive at the present, Shadowbringers. Where it introduces a lot of Quality of life improvements for gathering and crafting and it is more focused on the story as well as crafting and gathering and it introduces two new jobs. Dancer as a range DPS and Gunbreaker as a Tank.
You may be wondering why I say only two jobs were released during Stormblood, well… unfortunately a third job was released and it was a fan series favourite. Why unfortunate? It introduces a new controversial category of ‘jobs’. Limited Jobs, jobs that cannot participate in current tier content. This is where our video leads into…
Limited Jobs
Limited Job, in concept doesn’t sound too bad of an idea where people can play an unbalanced class in a game that is separate from the main content. However, I feel like the implementation in FF14 should be improved or limited jobs should be turned into normal jobs and the concept of limited jobs as a whole needs to be removed.
The Solo Experience
Making a Job specifically meant for solo content is not feasible, especially when most of the content is group oriented (When the encounter is done synced). This is painfully obvious in Raids and Trials where nowadays the fights are mechanic focused.
There is also the lack of incentive to even try and do a solo dungeon run other than a spell. I got some news for you, did you know if you group up with four Blue Mages not only the dungeon will be done quicker but you’ll be helping each other out on completing the Blue Mage Log (Progress to achievement as well) and getting the spell in the dungeon. Three reasons why anyone would do that over a solo experience, there is 0 incentive to solo a dungeon other than just for fun (Which is a subjective reason so it is more of an opinion than a reason), players don’t want to interact with others (or join PF), or for the spell.
That aside nowadays there's plenty of content for players to do solo content, such as Deep Dungeons (Palace of the Dead & Heaven on High), Squadrons, Eureka (Not Including Baldesion Arsenal) and New Game +. These were perfect solo content, and the developers had a chance to implement Blue Mage into these content. However it did not happen, and the only solo content it has is Masked Carnival which is a glorified puzzle combat instance. I’ll go into more detail later, but for now let's focus more on the problems of Limited Jobs.
Limited Job is content rather than a job itself
Limited Job is content rather than a job itself Blue Mage is just a mini game with little to no replay value and with little rewards (exclusive rewards included). It hurts to see a job being treated like this while it has potential to be a normal job in group content. The content updates for blue mage are dry and stale and the only major update we got is the spells and that is the only exciting thing to look forward to. Doing Omega raids which is fun but I’ll only do the raid once and never touch it again. For a content it is pretty bad, considering it is only replaying old raids as an all blue mage party and just new stages of masked carnival which is like any normal fight with the added effect of pick and choose the correct spell.
Originally Posted by TeraTyrantShadic
(2)WHM | RDM | DNC
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