catwho wrote:
In XI, Blue Mages have a complex set of spells that they acquire from observing and killing monsters. Most of the spells mimic effects of normal magic, but BLU also had some unique physical magic attacks that allowed them to actually be aggressive DPS players as opposed to mid line or back line like all the other mages. They also have job abilities that enhance or combine with their magic. (Mmmmm self skill chains...) A BLU is super effective in dungeons where you'll encounter monsters with immunity to some types of damage.
Edited, Mar 5th 2013 7:29pm by catwho
One of the things that disappointed me about 1.0 was how antiquated the ability sets typically were. I felt like classes like PUP and BLU from FFXI had achieved a level of depth between their build mechanics and combat flexibility that made them really interesting classes, while most of the older classes have gotten a bit more fleshed out over the years, but started out extremely dry with a finite array of 'push button-> get bacon' attacks. XIV seemed to be a marginal improvement with positional attacks, pushback attacks, etc., but overall still very hollow.
One of the greatest weaknesses of contemporary MMOs, WoW clones or otherwise, is that they really don't let you DO a lot of things with your character. When they do, it's just an action button--nothing that challenges you to interact with the game in a meaningful way. It's a lot of 'target X-> push button-> win' (GW2 is a repeat offender of this in nearly every other quest). They reduced the fetch quest to a micro scale.
Let me create some interesting effects, is all I'm saying. Put some physics into it. If it's all just numbers ticking away while I press my best buttons, I'm hard pressed to give a ****.