If you've been keeping up with Final Fantasy 14 news, you've probably heard or read of the recent big reveal of a new job, the Blue Mage!! =D I was so excited during its unveiling in November! XD It was my favorite FF job from playing FF5 as a kid. ^_^

For those unfamiliar with the job/theme, Blue mages don't learn skills from typical leveling, but instead learn them by surviving a hit by the skill from enemy monsters. Due to the large number of monsters you can learn skills from, you get a variety of skills that heal, support, attack, and debilitate, many of them working on specific number mechanics, like "white wind" which heals your party for the value the caster's current health, and "????" that deals as much damage as how much hp the caster is missing. You also got spells of elements that aren't available to other jobs like wind and water. =3

One of the really fun things about the job in the old games was the monster hunting and discovery aspect. It was exciting to explore the world looking for new monsters, because whenever I found a new skill to learn, it was like finding buried treasure! Sometimes, the creators of the game were tricky and would give a monster a learnable skill, but then no mana to cast it, making you have to recover their mp to test if you can learn it. It was so much fun exploring the world, finding what monsters spawn where and learning their skill sets and habits; I feel like it really helped get me invested in the games and their worlds too. =)

I was wanting Blue mage so bad for so long in FF14; ever since Cecilia and I started playing in 2.0. It's actually the reason why my character in-game has always had a blue stripe tattoo across her eyes like a mask, which made itself into LiA too with Pie having the "super hero" tattoo. ^^ To be honest, it didn't really have anything having to do with being a hero, BUT it IS because I always considered Blue Mages in FF5 to be dressed like "super heroes" since they wear a face mask over their eyes (with white eyes like many American comic heros) and a snazzy cape! I admit I lost hope that the job would make it into FF14 since the head creator, Yoshi-P, said at the beginning of Heavensward that the way blue mage's mechanic works doesn't really fit well with the type of game FF14 is. I mostly lost hope on the job being in-game during at the reveal of Samurai and Redmage for Stormblood, but WOW, they're actually doing it now! XD They're even keeping learning mechanic (though a little different)!! =D Because of how it works, it won't be considered the same type of job as other jobs in FF14 and will have a few limits when it comes to instanced content, but it still makes me really happy, I think maybe especially too because the decision was made with wanting to keep the spirit of what made the job so special in the older games in tact. It's really nice feeling that the makers of FF14 are also, themselves, big fans of the old games. I think maybe I'm happy too because this also isn't considered a new job for the upcoming expansion, Shadowbringers, meaning we can look forward to more big jobs come release. ^_^