Blue mage as a sub job

[Wiseman40]

I've seen some speculation as to which subjobs would be best for a main job blue mage. My opinion there is most likely whm or smn, but possibly blm or rdm...

I realize that with little hard facts on how blue mage will work in game it can be difficult to figure out how it will work as a sub job. Many people are making a comparison between blue mage and red mage, and rightly so, as red mage has a variety of different skills, and a blue mage likely will as well. However, as a blue mage will likely be choosing skills from enemies (my guess is that there will be a definate cap on the number of spells a blue mage can steal from enemies at a given time, and that they will have to remove some to make room for others in the future). That being said, they may be able to specialize (become more like a black mage, or white mage perhaps) or diversity (to become more like a red mage).

This may mean that, depending on how powerful these spells become in the hands of a blue mage, that blue mage may be replacing some of the common sub jobs we see today.

For instance, many people sub whm (smn, brd, blm, rdm) as their full time, party subjob. In addition, people tend to sub whm for farming and whatnot to reduce downtime.

It may be that whm may stop being the best choice for some of those situations.

I speculate that whm will still provide more mp than blue mage (because I think blue mage mp boosts from sj may be more on par with rdm), but the ability to use enemy spells may be very attractive, not only for mages that had previously been subbing whm, but for some melee jobs as well.

As a monk, I sub warrior for berserk and other helpful abilities, but it may turn out that being able to steal some buffs (haste type spells, protection etc) MAY be more powerful than the war sub, finally dethroning war as the main sj for monk. (Personally I'm happy wtih war so no worries if that doesn't happen). The posibilities seem endless.

[Jei]

Since blue mage is still considered mage,
using blue mage as sub job is good or not will depend largely on what spells and abilities are available to them from lvl 1 to 37.
I will have to wait until the job comes out before I can say anything more about it in this regard.

[LadyPeorth]

Since blue mage is still considered mage,
using blue mage as sub job is good or not will depend largely on what spells and abilities are available to them from lvl 1 to 37.
I will have to wait until the job comes out before I can say anything more about it in this regard.

Exactly. In order to speculate if a job subs very well, you need a lot of information on what is available to said job. As Blue Mage is one of those stranger jobs, if everything was available, it could easily be subbed by almost any job. However, as that hardly seems the case...we must wait and see

[Akai]

seeing whm/blm's black magic isnt very good, blue magic prolly will suck subbed <_<

[Wiseman40]

Naturally it won't be as useful as it would be as a main job... I'm expecting much of it to be useless in fact.

However, some abilities don't change much or at all.

That would mean that a fair number of the abilities 37 and below would be useless to a level 75 player, but some of them would be very useful.

If the only restriction is that you can only steal skills from level 37 or lower enemies it'd be a very useful sub

[framerate]

Imagine if 10,000 needles was a level 1 ability (if you managed to obtain it!)

BLU would be an amazing sub job ;)

[LadyPeorth]

Imagine if 10,000 needles was a level 1 ability (if you managed to obtain it!)

BLU would be an amazing sub job ;)

Level 1 BLU and Level 75 PLD at Pal mines.

BLU> K bring them...
PLD> *trains all Quadavs*
BLU> *readies 10k needles*
BLU> *attains level 10*

It'd be like Mage AoE leveling in WoW

[Khidir]

I have a funny feeling like all mage jobs blu will have its own magic skill it will specialize in

i mean really SE wouldnt let that happen where a blm would sub blu to outdo blu as a main

Rdm
Master of Enhancing and Enfeebling(enhancing for now since we have highest skill i feel pir will change this)

Whm
Master of healing magic

Blm
Master of elemental magic and dark magic

Smn
Master of summoning magic

Bard(i consider a mage)
Master of wind, singing, and instrumental skill

Ninja
Master of ninjutsu

but then again looking at war/nins if they have the right ability such as with war/nin or rdm/nin dual wield or blink shadows then it is possible if SE allows a powerful ability to be subbed then blu will be overpowered stereotyped like nin has and fit into its own cookiecutter mold

But I'm sure SE learned from their mistake...hopefully

[LadyPeorth]

They wonn't until someone finds the loophole.. Also DRK is the master of Dark Magic and BRD actually has I think it was a B or C in all singing skills.

[BurningPanther]

Actually, RDM is the master of Enfeebling magic, which we have an A+ rating in. Bards are masters of Enhancing magic.

[Khidir]

Bards enhance thru wind, singing and instruments i got my info on what i posted here

forgot to say Drk and Blm dark magic are both A-

http://www.killingifrit.com/page.php?id=735

[Eauijhkuu]

but then again looking at war/nins if they have the right ability such as with war/nin or rdm/nin dual wield or blink shadows then it is possible if SE allows a powerful ability to be subbed then blu will be overpowered stereotyped like nin has and fit into its own cookiecutter mold

But I'm sure SE learned from their mistake...hopefully

I don't think S-E has made much of a mistake with the ninja subjob. I just think it just creates more of a diversity in possibilities. But of course, no BLM/WHM is going to outheal a WHM/BLM. And no WHM/BLM will ever outnuke a BLM/WHM. The same goes with WAR/NIN and NIN/WAR. WAR/NIN will not have much more delay and less evasion than NIN/WAR.

Each combo has its strength and its weaknesses. Guess it just comes down to preference and style in the end.

Players just tend to become extremely biased when making parties (Not certain as to WHY this is...it just happens to be on FFXI community). I personally loathe blink tanking, even before the nerf with ninjas because they don't do enough damage to actually hold major hate in the first place. However - Two Blink tanks = Awesomeness. We could also say that Two Ninjas are pretty much equivalent to 1 PLD. As to the fact that Ninjas can evade complete damage with shadows...when they do get hit (For hard hard damage, I might add), the WHM just ends up healing twice as much as they would if they had a well suited PLD. (That's what you get for being a lazy WHM :P /end joke)
Stereotypically, Ninjas are best for tanking. But hopefully players will become more educated through their party experiences instead of taking another person's word for it directly.

So I guess I'm just trying to say - Each job has its own usefulness. A subbed job will never be as powerful as its main.
My speculation from previous FFs, since Bluemage have tended to gain their abilities from being exposed to monster abilities (Lores/Blue Magic/Ronso Rage - Strago FFVI , QuistisFFVIII, QuinaFFIX ,Khimari FFX), I think that BLU will be a very intersting Support/Offensive job. I sincerely woner how much hate a "White Wind" Ability would pull, if it were to ever be implemented.