When I started speculating about what new jobs we’ll see in 5.0, I played around a bit with existing gear and made what seemed like appropriate looks for all of them. I didn’t put a whole lot of time into a Scouting look for Blue Mage, though, and with Scouting/Ninja winning this month’s poll, I thought I’d take another stab at it. Of course, I’ve no idea if Blue Mage is actually going to be a Scouting job to begin with (or if it’s actually going to be one of the new jobs, for that matter), but it’s fun to play around with the possibility anyway!

My first mock-up was basically my then-current Ninja glamour dyed blue, with the Thavnairian Turban to capture some of the vibe from Blue Mage’s Artifact Armor from Final Fantasy XI. At the time, I was a lot more interested in thinking about how Blue Mage would be represented in this game instead of what it might look like (and I had two other outfits to cobble together, too!), so I took a quick route that worked fairly well. But, as hard as it might be to believe, I’m finally getting a little tired of the Nezha Lady’s Togi, and so I knew I definitely wanted to avoid using it again as I hammered out a more “proper” Blue Mage look.

Glamour Components (Required Level: Scouting 68)
Weapon: Ohojo Kai (Royal Blue)
Head: Thavnairian Turban (Royal Blue)
Body: Chimerical Felt Tabard of Scouting (Royal Blue)
Hands: Molybdenum Armguards of Scouting (Royal Blue)
Legs: Nezha Lady’s Slops (Royal Blue)
Feet: Replica Allagan Sollerets of Striking (Royal Blue)

Blue Mages have traditionally been pretty cloth-focused in their armor throughout the Final Fantasy series, so I knew I had to find a body piece that was both melee-oriented but still largely cloth- and leather-based. There are a wide variety of options for Scouting classes, of course, so the Chimerical Felt Tabard that I decided on for this attempt (there are going to be more for sure!) is by no means the only workable choice. What sold me on the Tabard was the prominent scarf, though, which was reminiscent of the Mavi Attire, Blue Mage’s Empyrean Artifact set from FFXI. There are a handful of other body pieces with scarfs, too, but at least as of writing, I think the Tabard also looks much better in blue than some of the others, and that’s important!

After I settled on the body piece (and the Turban, of course), I started looking for moderately armored pieces to fill out the other slots, since my best guess is that Blue Mage is going to take on a melee role much like it did in FFXI. I had the Molybdenum Armguards in mind already, since I started out first experimenting with the accompanying Gazelleskin Corselet of Scouting. After experimenting with a few other choices, with the Augmented Torrent Armguards (which don’t dye as cleanly as I’d like) nearly winning out, I decided to stick with them. They’re pretty slim, and the metal plating on the one arm actually works fairly well with the shoulder guard on the same side of the Tabard (even if the two bits aren’t exactly the same color), making them a workable choice even if they’re not perfect.

Boots proved pretty tricky, as they often do when I’m not looking to just slam a pair of leather thighboots on a look. Very few options for leg gear look good when dyed something other than black or brown, or (for armor) silver or gold, but given everything else, I needed something that worked in blue. I considered going with something like the Serpentskin Brais for quite some time, but I couldn’t find a solid pair of shorter boots that I liked in blue, so I ended up sticking to Alahra’s “normal,” with something tall and a pair of shorts (of which the Nezha ones were the best fit I could find). I’m not especially happy with the Allagan Sollerets here, since they’re far more armored than I would have otherwise liked, but they do look all right when dyed blue, which is what had them win out in the end.

Assuming that we do see Blue Mage for the next expansion, this definitely won’t be my last attempt at a Blue Mage glamour, since I’m not perfectly satisfied with it, and there are plenty of options to experiment with, too. Like I did in the lead up to Stormblood for Red Mage and Samurai, I’ll probably try to have a finalized glamour for each new job before the expansion’s launch. My S.O. will almost certainly be switching to Blue Mage immediately since it was her FFXI main, which means I’ll want to be prepared with proper glamours on day one, since I’ll level one of the others alongside her until she’s caught up to my Ninja’s level. So, while Blue Mage probably won’t be the first one I level, it’s still the one I’m most excited for, which will mean plenty of glamour experiments as we get closer and closer to 5.0! (And then, naturally, we won’t even get Blue Mage and all the thought I put into it will have been for naught, right?)