So...About Blue Mage

[aveyond-dreams]

Don't let an echo chamber paint the whole picture.

There are legitimate issues that need addressing. The fact that anyone got it in their heads to remove Samurai's signature ability is something people struggle to believe. The fact that Blue Mage released in the state that it did and they were "ok!" with how limited Hrothgar were at launch speaks to either: complete mismanagement of the individual project, or a lack of necessary resources to complete the project. A lot of their concerns are valid ones and need addressing. Ignoring and shouting down other people's concerns when they began to notice cracks in the foundation was a major factor leading up to WoW's downfall.

BLU didn't get the same reaction, because people just played and enjoyed it for what it is. It's funny when you stated that BLU didn't get the same backlash as Viera as a sort of a communal failure to raise a committed protest, when actually there just wasn't enough anger there in the first place.

I was here when Blue Mage was announced and launched. The reaction was divisive, with people somehow trying to justify why it was ok for Shiva's ice bow attack to take 200 runs of EX to obtain. The outrage was there all right but it was scattered across 300 different threads, not a megathread. The failure to organize is why Blue Mage is still in this useless state, with nothing long-lasting or worth pursuing being added to it. Less longevity than a Dissidia Opera Omnia event.

Again, it's a conflict between those of us who have a high standard for what we receive here and those who are ok with...whatever that was supposed to be, and still is.

I can't for the life of me think of any broken content being released. Buggy? Sure. But broken? Not even Diadem 1.0 would be considered as broken, just very unpopular. I guess my definition is different to yours.

Dare to dream, it's free after all. Just don't be disappointed when you wake up.

We clearly have a different definition of what constitutes broken because the fact that this new mode of PVP released with a bug that renders Bard in permanent walking mode is something that I find completely unacceptable, which is to say nothing of whatever went wrong with the lottery system. Yeah, that is *broken* and so is having a job permanently locked 20 levels behind cap and locked into old, outdated content with lackluster rewards no one at max level seems to take interest in beyond 2 weeks.

[Nihility]

Technically they could just make a blue mage job but all the skills would have to be set and it would probably just play very similar to summoner.
The limited version is far too overpowered to be lumped in with normal jobs at this point.

It's probably better to think of it as a minigame rather than an actual job.

I think a large part of it's staggered leveling is giving bursts of activity in older areas as well.

I wouldn't say no though. I've loved blue mage since FFV

[Lunalepsy]

Will the blue haired step child finally be made a full Job next expansion since we're probably going to New World then. Or will it remain a niche, left in the molding dust of previous expansions?

Seriously, just make the Job a fully functioning one and have its "Limited version" be something completely seperate you can toggle on and off for it's own unique content and stuff.

#ReviveDaBloo

It's a class that belongs to a legacy gameplay/style. It will never become a thing unless it's reduced to nothingness.

[Auryan]

There are legitimate issues that need addressing. The fact that anyone got it in their heads to remove Samurai's signature ability is something people struggle to believe. The fact that Blue Mage released in the state that it did and they were "ok!" with how limited Hrothgar were at launch speaks to either: complete mismanagement of the individual project, or a lack of necessary resources to complete the project. A lot of their concerns are valid ones and need addressing. Ignoring and shouting down other people's concerns when they began to notice cracks in the foundation was a major factor leading up to WoW's downfall.

Kaiten was certainly a SAM ability, yes, but when was it retroactively decided that it was anything resembling "signature"? Must've missed that memo. I didn't say that there weren't valid criticism to give, but rather your view is affected by the fact that you hang out on the Forums. You know, the place where people go to exclusively complain about anything. And outside of that you get a whole variety of opinions on many topics.

I was here when Blue Mage was announced and launched. The reaction was divisive, with people somehow trying to justify why it was ok for Shiva's ice bow attack to take 200 runs of EX to obtain. The outrage was there all right but it was scattered across 300 different threads, not a megathread. The failure to organize is why Blue Mage is still in this useless state, with nothing long-lasting or worth pursuing being added to it. Less longevity than a Dissidia Opera Omnia event.

Again, it's a conflict between those of us who have a high standard for what we receive here and those who are ok with...whatever that was supposed to be, and still is.

I remember those threads. The same endless talking points over and over, but this time it was mostly done by the same small group of people. They died out because no one outside of the Forums took them seriously.

We clearly have a different definition of what constitutes broken because the fact that this new mode of PVP released with a bug that renders Bard in permanent walking mode is something that I find completely unacceptable, which is to say nothing of whatever went wrong with the lottery system. Yeah, that is *broken* and so is having a job permanently locked 20 levels behind cap and locked into old, outdated content with lackluster rewards no one at max level seems to take interest in beyond 2 weeks.

BRD is a bit buggy, but easily worked around. Happens and is fixable. Lottery system not working as intended? Fix asap and apologize. Sometimes things go wrong and it's good to be transparent when things go south.

BLU working intended as a Wondrous Tails like content? Well, yeah, they said so from the very beginning. Why are you acting surprised? Not balanced = not doing content with balance in mind. Simple enough.

[Soge01]

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.)

- As another pointed out on page 7, the totems and learning new Blue spells specifically for the "unlimited" version of Blue Mage could be used as a possible way for that version of Blue Mage to learn spells.

- People like myself want a Blue Mage that can play in all content without the restrictions the current Blue Mage has. It's not fun to see your favorite job be restricted to just niche and outdated content when all the other Jobs get to have fun playing through all the current content and even old content that the current Nlue Mage could thrive in, like Eureja and Bozja. That isn't to say I would want to get rid of current Blue Mage for an "unlimited" version. That would be just dumb, lol! While I enjoy Blue Mage for what it is currently, it would just be nice to have a second version of it where it has access to all content. xD

- The identity of Blue Mage, I believe wouldn't be stripped from it if a second version of it were made so it can play in all content. Blue Mage, fron my own perspective from what I've played in this game and previous FF games, has always been a powerful caster class that takes the power of its enemies and uses it against them. To me, this can be easily replicated in an "unlimited" version of Blue Mage. How would one do this, I cannot say. Though a previous poster here on one of the previous pages to 6 made a really in depth thingy on joe an "unlimited" Blue Mage could function and he talked about Blue Mage using the same elemental spells over and over again to unlock bigger and powerful ones. Like, you start out with Water Cannon and you got to Water Breath (I think that's a spell) next and so on, until you can blow up your enemy with Leviathan's Tsunami attack or something as your big water elemental finisher. So, at least in my opinion, there are plenty of ways to keep Blue Mage's iconic traits intact without stripping it of what it is.

- I also wanted to see Blue Mage have a full version of it possibly made for 7.0, because it's the caster job anybody would think of when you mention New World. And since we're more than likely going there next expansion, why not make a fully functioning version of it? Another poster on a previous page to 6 also pointed out how we could get another Blue Mage Job Crystal that functions similar to all the other Job Crystals, so as to also help keep the identity of current Blue Mage seperate from the newer one.

And about those who would complain on the forums about the devs being lazy for just making a second Blue Mage for the 7.0 expansion instead of giving us a completely new class with a seperate identity. Who cares. They'll complain to the high heavens until they actually get their hands on this second Blue Mage job and most of them will either shut their gobs, thinking this new Blue Mage is a fine addition to the already existing caster jobs or they'll screech even harder, complaining that the Job is severely lacking in something or the other like SMN.

Personally, I'd rather see the devs take that risk. I'd rather Blue Mage have two distinct functioning versions one where we can play it in it's own fun little niche content with other limited jobs and expanding on the lore that is that version of Blue Mage. And being able to play a standard job class Blue Mage, where some of us who actually want to play it in all content can finally do so with some fun little unique caster gimmick of it's own that doesn't do what the current casters do.

- And keeping Blue Mage in the DPS role if it's made "unlimited" is fine by me. Blue Mage has always been a DPS of sorts in other FF games. Or at least the ones I've played, so it makes sense it would stick to that type of gameplay, unless the devs want to pull a Dark Knight on us and try something new with it.

[Soge01]

It's a class that belongs to a legacy gameplay/style. It will never become a thing unless it's reduced to nothingness.

But would you say that about Red Mage? Look at previous versions of it and look at the XIV one. In my opinion, XIV Red Mage was one of the best additions to RDM's legacy to date!

So, why not give Blue Mage the chance to possibly experience a similar rebirth in XIV? The devs claimed they couldn't make Blue Mage function in XIV like all the other Jobs, but I find that to be crap. All it takes is a little creativity to make a Job like Blue function in XIV like the others. Just gotta throw caution to the wind and brain storm on what they can do!

[Eorzean_username]

So, why not give Blue Mage the chance to possibly experience a similar rebirth in XIV? The devs claimed they couldn't make Blue Mage function in XIV like all the other Jobs, but I find that to be crap. All it takes is a little creativity to make a Job like Blue function in XIV like the others. Just gotta throw caution to the wind and brain storm on what they can do!

Honestly, with the way Job design became from Stormblood onward, it's really simplistic to make "actual" FFXIV Blue Mage.

All it needs is:

• A set of animations and visuals that fit the iconic FF franchise concept
• A rotation that feels "like the Job"
• A gauge, probably called the "Blue Gauge" or something else simplistic and obvious, that relates to the rotation and concept in some way
• Some AF sets that mimic iconic appearances from throughout the FF franchise history
• A Limit Break 3 animation.
• A role in an organized party.
• Probably something else that I'm forgetting that someone will point out soon.

BLU already has almost all of those, and the remainder are "easy" (quote-unquote) to fill in.


I think that Mr. Yoshida fundamentally misunderstood something when he asserted that what makes Blue Mage a "Blue Mage" is just hunting down overpowered actions and then being ridiculously overpowered. This is... really wrong.

Maybe it's true for some players, but for many other players, what made Blue Mage a "Blue Mage" is that it wears cool outfits or is otherwise a quirky memorable character, and it uses enemies own attacks against them, rather than traditional FF spells. And that's just... cool. The "overpoweredness", and/or lack thereof, was never the point for me.

I just like being blue. And using monster magic. That's... it.

The BLU questline could just be about hunting down monsters and acquiring their magicks (already implemented — done). And SE is basically "over" Job Quests now, so any further explanations or explorations aren't even needed (which is depressing, but another topic for another day).

As for the "rotational gimmick", well, just as a random example — look at things like FF9 Quina's Eat and FF10 Kimahri's Lancet. These characters consume something from the enemy, and then wield it themselves.

So a Blue Mage Gauge would be about drawing something from the enemy (obviously, in FFXIV, it's going to be... "aether"), and then using it to fuel magicks based on enemy attacks.

Maybe it's randomized each time, and unlocks a different set of monster action types depending on what type of aether you manage to draw.

So, BLU wants to draw aether from monsters/enemies to fill up its Blue Gauge (or whatever), and when it has enough, it can expel that enemy aether to perform a Monster Mirage (or whatever they want to call it) where the BLU briefly channels the learned magic of a previously-encountered foe.

So for example, something like

• Water Cannon filler
• Blood Drain on-cooldown every 15s to generate Blue Aether
• Sharpened Knife on-cooldown every 30s to maximize damage output in exchange for a bit of melee-range riskiness
• (some other fluffernutter inserted here and there, to make the rotation feel more complete)
• As you generate Blue Aether, your own aether reacts unstably, and so the exact monster that you're going to Mirage if you use your gauge keeps changing — you can either spend when you see one that you prefer, or keep generating more Blue Aether to try to gamble for a different monster
• When you're ready to dump Blue Aether, or party buffs / encounter timings necessitate it, you Mirage into whatever monster you've ended up landing on, and use its action(s) — whether it be Number 24, Greater Malboro, etc, etc, etc.

By keeping the dump simple (ie, 1 or 2 actions, such as a GCD+OGCD combo), it allows BLU to have a large catalogue of potential Mirages, contrasting it with Summoner, which uses a small selection of deeply-attuned Primals that have more involved actions and rotations.

So for example, if you end up with Malboro Aether when it's time to dump gauge, you might do Vine Probe (GCD) + Bad Breath (OGCD), then return to your baseline rotation.

Then this gets built on, like most basic rotations, through the addition of cooldowns, procs, and other modifying factors.

Maybe flesh this out by adding some of the slick lore and theming that FFXI BLU had going on, and scale back the slap-stick cheese of the current BLU storytelling.

Then we get to the other classic BLU feature, the "build-a-bear" quality of slotting together different monster actions into combos and sets.

Basically, I think that the solution to this is to keep the core DPS rotation locked-down and "pre-formed" in structure, like other Jobs — this makes balancing practical. Then allow BLU to swap around its Support actions from a pool of learned monster actions.

For example, BLU might have 2 "Healing" slots. It can bring a Raise, a HOT, a direct heal, a barrier, etc — but it can't bring everything at once.

Maybe 1 "Enhancement" slot that grants the party a useful buff or debuff, such as Off-Guard or Peculiar Light.

1 "Enfeeblement" slot that grants a support tool, such as Silence, Stun, etc.

1 "Defensive" slot that grants a protective tool, such as Diamondback (which... would need to function a little differently), Dragon Force, etc.

1 "Movement" slot that grants a movement tool, like a dash, backstep, teleport, etc.

This support-slotting design lets BLU still feel kind of "tricky" and rewarded for gathering extra monster spells, without forcing BLUs to jump through collection hoops just to have a functioning core DPS rotation and jump into content — that aspect would be standardised and tuned on the assumption that it's the same for all BLU.

...But yeah honestly, this doesn't seem complicated to me, in terms of "How do we give Blue Mages what they want?"

Black Mage gets a new fire spell every expansion.

White Mage gets a new boring healing spell every expansion.

Red Mage gets a new flamboyant weird spell every expansion.

Blue Mage gets... a new famous monster skill? Right? I'm happy. That's all I want. I really don't care that much if I have to go manually vacuum it out of some boss's skull, or if it just shows up in my spellbook when I complete my daily Frontline and level up.

Hells, man! Just make the new Blue Mage spells come from enemies that players literally have to encounter during each expansion's MSQ. Now you can conceptually have BLUs "learn" those spells as they level up, and design their rotations around that, without worrying about whether all BLUs will remember to do it — they literally can't access new content without seeing and defeating the monsters that drop the spells, because everything is gated behind the MSQ anyway.

[Avenger]

I think the community of players that actually play BLU in older savage content enjoy it for what it is. I would prefer they actually just made more "limited" jobs that could have more varied and interesting design at the cost of not balanced for on content current pve

Would love to run an Eden party with Blue Mages, Gamblers, Time Mages, and a Chemist.

I could imagine Beastmaster being added as a limited job, and Puppetmaster as a regular job.

Construct 7 seems to be an Arithmetician. Cid and company are obviously Engineers.

Time Mage reminds me of how I miss haste, slow, and stop as spells. (And reflect, though it's not exactly time magic.)

Support classes seem like they'd be hard to fit into regular 4p dungeons; perhaps DNC is the closest that we have now.

For some time I've wondered if crafting/gathering aspects could be added to a dungeon in a way that would actually be fun. In any case my Alchemist is ready.

[MonsutaMan]

Honestly, BLU should/could have been a normal job.

BST is the only job that should warrant the limited status due to it being a "Limited job" in XI.

BLU can work in a group setting; I just don't see how BST could if they are being true to the class. Unless it is a mounted animal rider. BST in XIV, imo, should be all about exploring, taming and collecting data on fauna.

BST is a grand opportunity to kill the stigma of limited jobs being a bad idea, cause limited BST would be great if done right. Pre-group XI BST was the best pet job I have ever played in any mmo. You got to explore so much of the game; you were the cpu of FFXI. You knew every zone like the back of your hand because group players followed a strict leveling path Starter city > Dunes > Qufim > Jungle > Garlaige > Nest > Quicksands > Kuftal > Boyahda > Onzozo > Ro'maeve or something like that.... it was pretty much the same cycle of familiarity.

BLU could easily fit one of the roles. Would be interesting to see if it would be a dps or a tank LOL......

[RavenNoire]

Apparently this is a hot take, but I don't think anything needs to change about BLU's design. It's niche, yes, but it is insanely good in the niche that it fills. They keep making us do old content to farm relic weapons, moogle tomestones, wondrous tails, etc. You can do these things on normal classes but it takes forever and it sucks a lot. With BLU, instead of being a slog of pressing the same rotation you always do but with less of your fun abilities, you always have all your abilities and you can tune the hotbar to the instance for maximum speed.

That last set of moogle tomestones? Farming CoB took something like 17 minutes per run on a normal class (I tested it with a friend - very small sample size and we wiped a couple of times), but on BLU it took 2 minutes with some minimal coordination due to the trash not being immune to Lv 5 Death.
The last xpac's relic grind? Fates. More Fates. More fates. Horrible on normal classes. Take BLU, yoink all the enemies toward you, freeze em, delete em. Even when ultravibration isn't up the freeze still gives you time to wail on a much larger group than you can realistically tank (without a tank + healer) and burn em down. When there were PF's for the raids, every BLU in that alliance reduced the time investment of the raid overall considerably.

In an ideal world, sure, I wouldn't mind if there was a separate unlimited job version, and I would be very happy if there was some way to play BLU in duty finder (required spells or whatever), but this is not an ideal world. Square Enix will not make the time investment to balance both sides, so if they are going to giveth unlimited pve, they will taketh away everything that makes BLU actually good and fun. I couldn't care less if they make more BLU specific content or contrive reasons to play BLU for unique gear/drops, as long as I can contrive ways into using it for the parts of the game that otherwise really, really suck, I am happy with BLU where it is.

That said, really need that level 80 update before the next relic grind. Super not looking forward to doing ShB content as an objectively weaker "balanced" class.