[Blossom Knight]

Everyone if you do play Final Fantasy 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 do you ever use the Blue Mage?

I rely on him or her alot. I found a guide about on 5 and 7 I'm looking for one on 6, 8, 9, and 10 and nothing notta zip.

Do they really think the Blue Mage is a waste of time?

[FAST6191]

I typically play Final Fantasy with maybe not a stats maxing/game breaking mindset but something like it for a reasonable amount of effort (I do like to explore, and will grind for a bit but it wears thin before long). If blue magic plays to that then I will use it, and most things are surprisingly well balanced here, though the mix of effects can be quite nice (maybe not as powerful but nice mix of status effects and element damage dealing) for an all rounder character.
More often than not trying to learn things in it is tedious or best done with a guide/notepad though so that does counterbalance it a bit over using someone else.

On a related note I have been quite enjoying this series comparing Final Fantasy games and evolutions within them and might as well go for the Blue one given the topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvg7ta05BGk

[Blossom Knight]

But that video is from Final Fantasy Union. And the only one from that I saw was about ultimate weapons.

So let me ask you this. What is your favorite blue magic spell in any game?

Mine's the Beta enemy skill from Final Fantasy 7 and it's all the whrilwind of fire in witch it's fromm hell.

[Jorpho]

Big Guard in FF7 is mighty handy.  But then, the whole materia system is kind of broken to begin with, and it just makes it even more broken.

[Blossom Knight]

How broken?

[Jorpho]

The game is just too easy in general, and some of the materia combinations are just completely overpowered. Surely people have been saying as much for the last twenty years?

[thr]

in FF6, Strago plays the blue mage role with his 'lores'. there's plenty guides on that (like here, here or here).
in FF8, Quistis learns blue magic for her limit breaks. ff8 is quirky, so it works a bit different here, and she learns blue magic by using items, not by fighting enemies. but the main principles still stand, and she still gets the role staples like big guard, aqua breath or w/e. here's a list.
in FF9, Quina takes the role. s/he learns blue magics by eating enemies, and here's a guide on that.
in FF10, Kimahri learns blue magics from the enemies by using his lancet skill, and can then use them for his overdrives. they're called Ronso rages in this game, and here's a nice guide about this.
in FF10-2 you get back a dedicated blue mage role (gun mage) for all party members. so it's back to the classic approach, and works just like you'd remember from the earlier games. i.e. a gun mage gets hit with a learnable enemy skill, and she learns it for her skillset. here's a guide.

the later installments have a blue mage role too, but you didn't ask about these, so there ya go. but they're still using the role and experimenting with it. even in FFXIV, playing a blue mage is lotsa fun too. and no, i don't think a blue mage is a waste of time, it's generally pretty fun to play.

as for my favourite blue magic, it's white wind i guess, just because it's often the best available healing spell, if a bit situational.

[Bonesy]

i'm partial to white wind or big guard

[Blossom Knight]

Sorry didn't know there was a warning that someone is interupting.
November 14, 2021, 09:22:14 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

in FF6, Strago plays the blue mage role with his 'lores'. there's plenty guides on that (like here, here or here).
in FF8, Quistis learns blue magic for her limit breaks. ff8 is quirky, so it works a bit different here, and she learns blue magic by using items, not by fighting enemies. but the main principles still stand, and she still gets the role staples like big guard, aqua breath or w/e. here's a list.
in FF9, Quina takes the role. s/he learns blue magics by eating enemies, and here's a guide on that.
in FF10, Kimahri learns blue magics from the enemies by using his lancet skill, and can then use them for his overdrives. they're called Ronso rages in this game, and here's a nice guide about this.
in FF10-2 you get back a dedicated blue mage role (gun mage) for all party members. so it's back to the classic approach, and works just like you'd remember from the earlier games. i.e. a gun mage gets hit with a learnable enemy skill, and she learns it for her skillset. here's a guide.

the later installments have a blue mage role too, but you didn't ask about these, so there ya go. but they're still using the role and experimenting with it. even in FFXIV, playing a blue mage is lotsa fun too. and no, i don't think a blue mage is a waste of time, it's generally pretty fun to play.

as for my favourite blue magic, it's white wind i guess, just because it's often the best available healing spell, if a bit situational.

Huh I'm talking main series so don't bring up side stories or spin offs and also Quina is male and you are to say he his him so don't say s/he Quina can't equip womens armor.

[thr]

Sorry didn't know there was a warning that someone is interupting.
November 14, 2021, 09:22:14 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Huh I'm talking main series so don't bring up side stories or spin offs and also Quina is male and you are to say he his him so don't say s/he Quina can't equip womens armor.

what spinoffs? o_O these are all in the main series mate.

and stop beating this dead horse that's Quina's gender. s/he is how it's being used ingame in the English version, so kindly direct your complaints to squeenix if it's something that doesn't sit well with you for whatever bizarre reason.

[Blossom Knight]

But aern't we going with that as close to the Japanese version now?

You know like we call Blizzard Blizzra and Blizzraga you know.

Anyway you keep how you think of Quina I'll keep in mine. I know how who equips what goes, trust me on this.

Example if you got a female only relic and you want to equip to Quina Quina can't wear it so that is proof that Quina is male and that's that. Trust me on GameFAQS I looked at Final Fantasy 9's armor guide on who equips what.

[thr]

whatever. it's just a poppet from a video game. none of their models have naughty bits anyway.

[FAST6191]

No move has ever stuck with me similar to how some summons, magic in general or even character specific abilities.

Some of the characters on the other hand. In which case if blue = enemy techniques then I am picking Gau from FF6.

[Blossom Knight]

Why bring Gau up? In Final Fantasy 6 and on the Beast Plans having Strago in the party I have to use both Gau and Relm to help Strago learn more blue magic way earlyer in the first world.

learning ones in second world takes skill.

[MysticLord]

Magic Rebalancing Rant:

Spoiler:

Blue magic is only useful because other magic schools are bad, other magic schools are unbalanced, and it has spells that are basically cheating (level n whatever spells).

Black magic can't hit all of the non-holy elements in many games, and by end game only like 4 spells are useful. White magic suffers from the same endgame spell utility issue, and usually only has one endgame offensive option. For both of them there's usually a Blue magic spell that covers what it does (Big/Mighty Guard for Protect/Shell and occasionally Haste). Time magic can be useful and is fairly well balanced, but it often lacks offensive option. Green magic can be useful (drain and especially osmose), but debuffs are rarely worth your time.

Even then most games are hold A to win so magic in general isn't that useful; not counting Ultima, Flare, and Holy.

What I would do:

• Make Black magic hit all the elements for however many levels of elemental spells you have - aero, quake, water, maybe dark. Give more enemies and gear elemental affinities so you can get more use out of them and use them for healing in some cases. I really dislike having non-elemental damage spells other than comet or meteor, and maybe Demi if yo can block % damage or there's a % damage element.
• Give White magic 3 levels of a holy element spell equivalent to Black magic's spells, and make most White magic buffs optional hit-alls.
• Slightly improve Time magic spells, and make more enemies vulnerable to them.
• Improve Green magic debuffs, make more enemies vulnerable to some and immune to others, improve the damage that drain can do.
• Make Summons cover all of the effects of Time and the non-Blue color spell schools, but make them hit-alls and partially randomize their effects for mass de/buffers and mass dispel.
• Sword magic should be all the offensive spell effects, but based on physical stats and targeting physical defense.

Once you have that, and you spread many of those spells among the enemies, then you should start thinking about what spells are useful for enemies to have and might be good for a Blue mage.

My idea of a Blue mage is that they should be able to do everything that another mage can do, but the more powerful their method of doing something the more conditional it should be. Tying White Wind to caster max HP can be a great heal-all, or a terrible heal-all; depends on your timing. A spell that deals as much damage as the caster has taken is another good example, as is damage based on your current HP, and those that do the same but for the target's HP.

A Blue mage IMO should be built around oddball spells that you could reasonably build a single character challenge around.

That said, I use Blue magic in FF7 because it's absurdly OP.

Barely used it in FF8 because it's hold A to win and why waste time with limit breaks?

In FF9, Quina is hard to use because she needs very careful damage dealing to eat/cook successfully, so naturally Square gave her a random damage weapon.

FF6 has a few things that are sort of Blue magic in that they use enemy skills: Dance, Rage, Sketch, Control, and of course Blue magic. It's pretty hard not to use it given how 1/3 of the party has something similar, but I wouldn't say they're terribly balanced.

FF5 Blue magic would be much better if most of the games passive skills were inherent for all classes once you learn them, especially Learning. I also don't know why on Earth there are multiple versions of Scan/Sense, and why they take up an entire skillset slot rather than a spell slot in another classes skillset. Most of the jobs should just have a skillset menu with things that are greyed out or not there until you learn them.

FFT requires monster skills and stats to be rebalanced because monster MA goes from 3 to like 99 and monster PA goes from 3 to 28; while the human MA and PA ranges are 2 to 28.

Blue mages seem to fill similar roles as Red mages: all-around generalists who can fill any niche. There isn't to my knowledge a purely magical generalist Blue mage in the series.

[PowerPanda]

On my 2nd playthrough of FF6, I used Strago in my main party, and he is an EXCELLENT Blue Mage. Aero, Aqualung, and Cleansweep cover elements that no other party members can use until close to the end game, Mighty Guard is OP, and GrandTrain and Quasar are both ultimate magic spells exclusive to him. Plus, the Gold Hairpin and Economizer work for his Lores too. In a game where any character can play any role, Strago is one of the more unique party members.

Aside from that, I never used Quistis or Kimhari. Quina was fun on a 2nd playthrough of FF9, but there was too much that went in to making them powerful. In FFT, Reis is actually set up as a Blue Mage in her stats, but she doesn't learn spells on contact. She is pretty darn strong if you take the time to train her.

[Spooniest]

When your passion for a fictional series of any kind is high enough for you to be rude to actual humans, it makes me want to close your thread. Just saying.

[KingMike]

Aside from that, I never used ... Kimhari.

I guess you mean for "Blue Magic". That game gives everyone a specific role, which feels nice at first to acknowledge the whole cast but then battle turns into a rotation chore. Call Wakka every time you see a flying enemy, etc.

[thr]

I guess you mean for "Blue Magic". That game gives everyone a specific role, which feels nice at first to acknowledge the whole cast but then battle turns into a rotation chore. Call Wakka every time you see a flying enemy, etc.

the game is divided into two distinct parts. the pre-airship part is a linear main story section, where you use distinct, specialised characters. the summoner and her guardians are all pretty unique characters (if a bit shallow or one-sided), and i feel their restricted roles kind of work here, resonate with the theme of pilgrimage and all, even if it does feel like a chore at times. but it plays well with the serious mood of this game, a pilgrimage is restrictive by definition, and shouldn't be too much fun. anyway, there's still some opportunity to switch roles, but it's tough and not worth it at this point with limited backtracking, scarce resources and all.

in the post-airship phase (which coincides with the big reveal turning things around into a more positive outcome), the world opens up, and with the characters free of their false obligations, the full access to sphere grid and the monster arena opens up as well to allow them to power level and freely respec. want to make Lulu into a fighting machine, or Tidus the best spellcaster in your team? no problem. with some research, and of course some grinding, you're basically drowning in ability points and spheres to customize your characters. you get 99 ability levels from don tonberry fight in the arena, and can grind fast for sphere drops from other bosses. this needs some monster hunting, and setting things up, but it's pretty easy if you know what to do. it's also kinda obligatory if you want to tackle the optional bosses.

Wakka can reliably hit flying enemies from the start thanks to his high accuracy stat. he starts with 25 points, while other characters get like 3-5. Tidus can sometimes hit flying enemies too, with his 10 accuracy, but it's not reliable. but pump everyone's accuracy and luck for a bit, and they all become equally good with hitting flyers.

it's really tough finding that sweet spot between having the whole party of jack-of-all-trades characters (FF5), and having fully specialised roles (FF9). at least in FFX we're able to go both ways with some effort.

[Blossom Knight]

Good point.