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5 Mightiest Blue Mages!
The Final Fantasy series is all about having their magic users grouped in to colour categories. Join me on this marvelous journey to learn about the mightiest Mighty Guard casting mages, the Blue Mage! Able to learn enemy spells, the Blue Mages can become very versatile depending on how you use them, learning everything from Death Spells, to White Wind healing! They have a use for almost every situation. Here they are, the mightiest Blue Mages in the series.
5. Final Fantasy V Blue Mage
What makes the Final Fantasy V Blue Mage so great? For starters, they are the first job to provide a balance of offensive and defensive capabilities! On top of that, they can wield swords and shields, making them more physically powerful than the average mage. There's nothing better than a sword wielding, stat-balanced, super cool superhero looking mage in your party. Look at them, they get masks, they get capes, two of the ladies even get feathers in their caps. Using a Blue Mage is so rewarding for me you could call it putting a feather in my cap. Right? Right?!?
Now the important part, how does the Final Fantasy V Blue Mage learn its Blue Magic? It takes the more traditional approach of needing to be hit by an ability to learn it. Because nothing says "Teach Me" like being hit by Death Claw. Fortunately, the Blue Mage doesn't need to survive in order to learn the ability, they just need a party member to make it through the fight. I'm all about some necessary sacrifice, so what's one death if it means learning how to Flamethrower an enemy.
The downside is that in order to get some of the beneficial abilities, such as White Wind, a Beastmaster may need to team up with your Blue Mage to help the process along, since enemies are selfish and aren't known to heal your party members when they need it. This could be an issue for the loner Blue Mage, who operates alone, possibly during the night.
Overall, a great entry in the series with the added benefit of being able to use whoever you choose as a Blue Mage.
4. Quina Quen
When not busy being a lovable goof and threatening to eat everything in sight, Quina also serves as the party's Blue Mage. Final Fantasy Blue Mage fans everywhere rejoiced at seeing the job being occupied by the large, pasty white, fork wielding Qu with the apron and the chef's hat. Or at least I did. Mainly because Quina is awesome.
What makes Quina such a great Blue Mage? Unlike most of the earlier games, Quina doesn't need to be struck with Pumpkin Head in order to learn it. Instead, like a true gourmand, s/he eats them and somehow absorbs their knowledge on how to cast LV4 Holy. This is great for people who enjoy eating (which is everyone) and also who hate having to confuse the enemy in order to get the more beneficial spells like Auto-Life. It's also just amusing to watch Quina eat enemies sometimes five its size.
On the downside, the enemy needs to be below 25% HP for Eat to work. You can't just eat enemies all willy nilly! That's how you get stomach cramps. This can be annoying if you don't have Scan and don't enjoy carrying around a Bestiary with you and doing math in your head. It can also be frustrating when you face off against weaker enemies who can't survive a turn long enough for you to eat them. The bright side is that Eat is successful when HP drops below 50% when Quina is in Trance mode, making things easier for Quina to finish off foes with dignity.
3. Strago Magus
Strago Magus puts to rest the saying that you can't teach an old dog a new trick, because this old dog specializes in learning new tricks. Although his superhero cape is not in the Blue Mage blue, he does have some stylish blue shorts to pull his look together.
Although it takes a different name in Final Fantasy VI, Strago's Lore ability is essentially Blue Magic. He uses the good ol' watch and learn technique to acquire new abilites, and doesn't need to suffer a Tsunami on his old bones to pick them up. All he needs to do is survive the fight. What's even better is that Strago doesn't even need to see an enemy use the ability to learn it, he can pick it up from party members who can use enemy skills, such as Gau, Relm, and Gogo. This certainly makes things better, since it makes it a much easier time to learn all of the spells you want and need.
On the downside, Strago has to actually see an ability being cast to learn it, so he cannot learn it if he is inflicted with certain status elements, one of them being blind. Apparently it isn't enough to feel an enemy self-destruct on you, you actually need to see the whole thing take place. Something I would imagine would be more scarring than anything. But overall, this old Mage has some serious learning talent, which makes him one of the best Blue Mages in the series.
2. Quistis Trepe
Quistis not only gets to be an awesome Blue Mage, but she gets to do it while having a fan club and hitting things with a whip. If nothing else, she brings a whole new element to the Blue Mage job, also being the only female Blue Mages aside from the games where you decide job classes.
Quistis is so good at Blue Magic that she doesn't even need to be hit with Acid to learn how to use it. She doesn't even need to be in the fight. All she needs is some Mystery Fluid and she's good to go. Quistis learns all of her Blue Magic by using items dropped by enemies. How does she do it? Who knows. Maybe she studies the items while we're busy running around in circles waiting to collect our SeeD pays so we can buy more magazines.
The downside is that Quistis can only use her Blue Magic as part of her Limit Break, meaning she generally needs lower HP to have access to her great abilities, like Shockwave Pulsar. The bright side is that a lot of her abilities are worth the wait, especially since they actual improve when in more dangerous situations.
1. Kimahri Ronso
And finally, our top Blue Mage of the series. He might not talk much and he might not make his presence known most of the time, but he is one excellent Blue Mage!
Why does he deserve the top spot on our list? A few reasons, actually. On top of being so much of a Blue Mage he is actually physically blue, he has one of the best ways to learn his Blue Magic. Thanks to his Lancet ability, not only does he not need to be hit with a skill to learn it, he actually heals HP and MP at the same time! So, instead of sacrificing HP to learn Fire Breath, he can just Lancet the appropriate enemy, and heal himself up.
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Lancet in action. It's so awesome,
you can't even see Kimahri's head!
But it doesn't end there! If Kimahri learns a Ronso Rage Blue Magic ability, it will also fill up his overdrive gauge, something very useful to boss fights. And if you miss certain abilities on your journey? Almost all of the spells can be learned during a boss fight with his fellow Ronso.
Simple, convenient, and with a few added bonuses, Kimahri's Lancet earns him the top spot on our Mightiest Blue Mages list!
What were some of your favorite Blue Mages? How about Blue Magic skills? Do you enjoy using Blue Mages in your party? Let us know your thoughts!
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I never cared much for Blue Mages and seldom use them in my party. Only Blue Mages out of this I recognize are Quistis and Kimahri, but the reasons I like them have nothing to do with being Blue Mages.
I like the color blue, though. So respect.
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This article made me giggle.
I used to hate blue mages. Which made me hate VIII cause I felt they were all blue mages cause they used draw to get abilities.
Then I replayed IX and actually used quina. Then I replayed X and actually used Kimahri.
Now I love blue mages. I probably should go back and play more of the entries with them.
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>>> The problem with Kimahri is that he have to wait for an overdrive to cast one blue magic.. Besides that, he was a cool character.
About the other
FF5 Blue M: I never used them much. I only liked the "Aqua Rake" spell..
Quina: Now we are talking, I have never used a Blue mage so much in any other FF. I could spam 9999 non-elemental damage with limit glove over and over. It saved my ass many times.
Strago: Never used him, there were way too many playable characters in this game..
Quistis Trepe: Same as Strago, I just used her when I had to.. Never cared much about Quistis..:luca:
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Switch Quistis and Strago and then reverse the order and you have my list. I never cared for Kimarhi, as character both in story and in gameplay and his blue magic ability was better handled in X-2.
I like Strago and his magic selection is pretty dope, but it is poorly paced out in the game along with his own late introduction so it kind of feels redundant to try and get Tsunami and Aero, which are great spells, when you can easily recruit him and send him straight into his own sidequest to obtain Grand Train which is his best spell. He's at least more fun than Kimarhi.
Quistis is a great character with a lot of potential but she's in the wrong game as the rest of the game's mechanics makes her Blue Magic not as useful.
Quina is fun, and like her FFV counterpart, Quina can break the game if you know what you are doing.
The FFV Blue Mages are broken as all hell and most people don't realize this because they never bother to obtain their spells and try them out. They can cripple a good chunk of the game's bosses and they have several exploits and access to non-standard elements that give them a great advantage in battle. It is no wonder they have been nerfed in most of the other FF games.
I would have also given a shout out to the Blue Mages in FFXI because they have a creepy awesome backstory and are pretty broken as well.
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5. Blue Mage - Final Fantasy V
Blue Mages are generally overpowered, but these guys are stylish too. Equipped with the snazzy berets, domino masks, shoulder pads, and capes, it's such a shame that the fantastic design that truly introduced the broken power of Blue Magic to the series would not continue on.
4. Quistis Trepe - Final Fantasy VIII
While FFVIII may be full of game-breaking limits, Quistis had some unique features that kept her one of the best for most of the game. A lot of her Limits were easily accessible even early on, allowing her to get to a high peak long before some of the others. Her skills were also among the fastest and most reliable. Degenerator would kill almost any non-boss in the game (only 4 non-boss mobs were immune to it, IIRC, and it never missed), and do so far faster than a Renzokuken would. Unlike Irvine's shots, she didn't need to tear through ammo. Unlike Zell's Armageddon Fists, you didn't need to wait half an hour for each enemy. Selphie may have had the potential to break the game, but you also needed to wait forever to actually do so. And Rinoa was the epitome of unreliable. Not only was Quistis fast and reliable, she achieved that state far earlier than the other characters, as she didn't even need huge stats with moves like Degenerator or Missile, which did damage regardless.
3. Enemy Skill - Final Fantasy VII
The version that first introduced me to the broken nature of Blue Magic, the Enemy Skill material is one of the finest game-breaking ability setups ever designed. Not only can it completely destroy your enemies at many points, but it gains skills at such a rate as to keep it broken reliably for most of the game. Everyone thinks of Beta as a Disc One Nuke, but Matra Magic does almost as well for much cheaper. Trine, Aqualung, then Magic Breath... And that's just offensive spells. This is a mighty little Materia.
2. "Blue Mage" - Bravely Default Avoiding spoilers, ok?
This is one of the most broken incarnations I've seen. In addition to the standard spells you get, it also has a handful of absurdly powerful unique abilities that go with it. Standard attack that drains health. Standard attack that drains MP. The ability to buff a stat and debuff the same stat on an opponent. Mass Charm spells. That's all standard before we start getting to the actual enemy spells you can acquire. Firestorm - Physical Fire damage equal to 1.25 times your regular attack to all enemies and lower their Defense as well. Sandstorm - Physical Earth damage to all enemies and blind. There are many more, and each has their uses, but I'm not going to list all or even most of them here. The biggest downside is that they only get access to magic attacks if you pick up the -aja spells from Norende.
1. Blue Mage - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Anyone who knows me knew this one was coming. This class makes you simply unkillable with a max level party. And that's in addition to the standard incredibly powerful spell set that Blue Mages get. Having access to things like Twister, Angel Whisper, White Wind (which is even better, since it is one of the very few non-Holy healing spells in the game, and can circumvent very annoying Laws), Matra Magic, and Bad Breath are just even more absurd than usual when combined with the tactical combat system. Then you add in a spell that can heal your whole party, regardless of location, for heavy amounts, while damaging the enemy for just as much, all for essentially no MP cost, and even the postgame content and random encounters (who are otherwise the most powerful foes in the game at max level) just become a joke, because nothing can kill you.
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Quistis left me disappointed as she struck as being just like the Blue Raja on Mystery Men. No blue anywhere. Not a hint. *sigh*
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My list would be as follows:
5. Final Fantasy V Blue Mage
4. Quistis
3. Quina
2. Gun Mage
1. Enemy Skill Materia
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I am missing the customized Blue Mage of Final Fantasy VII here. Someone who beats Ruby WEAPON with only that is cool. Also it is pretty much the most valuable Materia for me since it has an incomparable efficience.
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FFXI Blue Mage is the best! But they all rock.
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my favourite part of this article was the picture of quina eating a stroper
shion don't you know this is a pg-13 site???
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Kimahri's technique for learning blue magic should become the standard for Blue Mages.
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Why is Quistis so high ?
Or is my hate and dislike for her, just blinding me ?
