So...About Blue Mage

[ReiMakoto]

Sure, I get that. But if you have "limited BLU" versus "unlimited BLU" as basically functionally separate jobs, and you have to strip away everything that basically makes blue magic "blue magic" (e.g., learning the spells by seeing them cast) in order to make it play well within level roulette... why not just make a different caster? Instead of a broken blue mage stripped of its blue magic identity, why not come up with a different caster that has some identity that works better in roulette?
Or, to put it another way: if, in order to make BLU work in normal play, you have to...

• Ensure that BLU learns spells at specific levels like other jobs (rather than learning them in content through observation), so you can guarantee that a given BLU has the necessary spells (rather than joining Roulette at level 63 while only having Water Cannon).
• Strip out the spellbook functionality, so that you can guarantee a given BLU DPS in a roulette has the necessary skills to function at that level, rather than some custom spell-set that doesn't work. (Who's going to want to wait for 15 minutes while a BLU tries to shuffle their spells to something appropriate to whatever they got in roulette?)
• Ensure that BLU syncs down in roulettes, so that (for instance) you don't have 17 AoEs in Sastasha while the other DPS has precisely none.
• Limit BLU to the DPS role, rather than allowing it to tank/heal, so that roulettes can role-match in a sane manner.

...then I would ask, what exactly about blue mage makes you want to play it in normal content? This is not a facetious question, I am genuinely curious; to me, all the things that would need to get stripped out to make BLU work in normal content would be most of the things that I personally feel actually make BLU... well, BLU. As opposed to just another caster?

Yes, it's possible they could basically define a set of spells from the BLU spellbook and just give them to you at various levels, and turn it into a normal caster; mechanically, that's possible. But what would give BLU a separate identity from any other caster at that point? What would make it worth making one of the two jobs in 7.0 be "BLU with a set spellbook where spells unlock automatically level by level, enforced DPS role, and with all the weird buffs/debuffs that would make balancing high-end content (like Savage or Ultimates) incredibly difficult if they had them", as opposed to some other caster?

Personally, I would prefer BLU remain BLU -- and a limited job that can be all the weird things -- and just get another caster. Because if you've split BLU into functionally two jobs... what's the gain? This is a genuine question, because I don't understand what it is that people actually want out of "second BLU".

And you would have to split it, realistically, because 1. existing BLU needs to be able to learn spells in the overworld, but you wouldn't want someone advancing the MSQ with that, and 2. you wouldn't want someone able to power-level "unlimited BLU' via "limited BLU"s absurd overworld XP buff. Among other things.

(I mean, this is leaving aside the fact that if they did make "unlimited BLU" one of the two jobs for 7.0, I can just imagine the howling on the forums about "that's not a new job, they just took an existing job and stripped all the neat stuff out to give us another caster DPS! That's so lazy! We should get a third job!" or whatever.)

To take your points a few at a time:

An unlimited blu is not stripped of its identity, peope have this no true scotsman fallacy built up around blu's identity. At its core BLU is just a caster who uses monster spells, how those spells are learned and implemented changes from iteration to iteration, and is even not "true" by a lot of peoples conditions in xiv, because many of your impactful spells are learned from totems.

"then I would ask, what exactly about blue mage makes you want to play it in normal content". If you've played blu raids, you'll have noticed that for the majority of most fights you are playing as "just another caster" if youre running dps blu. And you know what, DPS blu's rotation is fun to me, you make the point of "all the weird buffs/debuffs that would make balancing high-end content (like Savage or Ultimates) incredibly difficult if they had them" but what are you actually talking about? Current BLU in raids isn't unbalanced because of any debuffs they have, theyre unbalanced because dps mimicry gives an absurdly large arbitrary DPS buff, the rest of the stuff they have is not particularly unbalanced, and a lot of the time only becomes unbalanced by the nature of stacking multiple of the same job, which is something you also witness in 8 tank clears of savage/ ultimate so is not exclusive to BLU's identity.

The other thing is for some people, BLU is their favourite job in the franchise, imagine a world where for some ungodly reason RDM was a limited job because "it was too hard to balance being both a Black Mage and White mage ability". People would want an unlimited RDM because RDM is their favourite class, its not hard to wrap your head around.

Also "Limit BLU to the DPS role, rather than allowing it to tank/heal, so that roulettes can role-match in a sane manner" is not even a problem, there is no planet where someone would want a BLU tank over a regular tank, BLU tanking is a novelty much like titan egi used to be, or DPS tanking in Bozja, it works but very not well, and the same but to a lesser degree with healer, although thats a whole other can of worms with healer design, and you probably would want to take a blu healer, but only because healing reqs are so low in this game that a BLU being a healer would have more dps options.

TLDR:

Current BLU already has a pretty balanced and fun rotation so WHY NOT have that available as an unlimited form, the game already can gate your progression by checking what spells you have, and adding level ranges for spells is not particularly challenging. For a quick fix, just block DF/MSQ access to unlimited BLU behind finishing the level 70 blu quests, and have another quest that checks if you have the right spells unlocked after. From that point on just have BLU's overworld leveling disabled for above 70 and have check ins every 10 levels where DF access for the next set of 10 levels in disabled until youve learned the 1 or 2 skills added to the unlimited rotation in that level range.