Getting away from the sheer utility of the jobs, I honestly had more FUN leveling BLU than I had in a long while. I never saw spell-farming as a chore, it was genuinely an adventure to go out to all sorts of different places, fight monsters I'd never sought to fight before, and felt like a real accomplishment when I learned a new spell.

Granted I haven't leveled SCH, but BLU was such a non-traditional job in terms of how spells are gained that I had a blast doing it. Not only that, but being able to adjust on the fly for different situations, mastering the art of getting the right spell-set crammed into your set points, deciding when to go for traits, stats, or specific spells, putting together gearsets and macros for all the different roles, basically all the THINKING that goes into being a really, REALLY good BLU, I simply love that job.

So if you're looking for what's hot right now in terms of mage flexibility, invite rate and end-game utility I can't really argue with the SCH recommendations. But if you're looking for a truly unique FFXI experience, I'd go with BLU. But that's just one mithra's opinion

Well smn and sch really are backline jobs. If thats more what you are looking for then those would be the way to go. Out of those 2 I would go with sch. Smn is a beast of a job to level, at least for me.

If you are looking to be in the thick of things and wacking away at a mob, then go with blu. I too wouldn't classify blu as a mage type job. They are very much dd in my book and entirely different than sch and smn.

I don't know all of the jobs you have leveled but I see you've done melee. Going from melee to a backline job is a big leap so you might want to take smaller steps and do blu first. I've known a lot of melee that decide to try a backline job and end up hating it because it is so different. Either way, good luck with your decision!

IDK, all those jobs mentioned in the OP need a full-time Refresh.

BLU isn't exactly sought after in terms of endgame jobs, but as others have said... it's a fun job. I do really well in many things that don't involve HNMs or mobs that have ridiculous resists.

I wouldn't, however, recommend it as a first job just because of the amount of time you will have to spend getting spells. Unless you have friends willing to assist you, several of the spells are not easy to get.

Yep, the spells really bugged me and its why I stopped lvling it. I had the absolute worst luck even with the most simplist ones!

I've been thinking and looking at a few things and I think I'll go with Sch as my next job to level.

I can start working on gear for Sch now, and for alot of it, while it requires some work, seems to be stuff that I can largely attain on my own.

For Blu and Smn however, the gear that I want for Blu will take a long time to attain (Perdu Hanger for one) and it seems that I'll be needing a decent amount of help for Smn gear.

So I can work towards the gear I want for both Blu and Smn, while working on Sch is my thought.

SCH doesn't. It can't provide refresh to others, but isn't dependent on it itself.

SMN might be less refresh dependent with the elemental siphon ability, but SMN are so rare that I haven't seen many since then to confirm this. (At 70 you can go SMN/SCH, although I'm not sure if that would be a good idea or not.)

I'm all for sublimation, but sublimation isn't intended as a "replacement".

Kaeko proved (with MATH!!!!!) that SCH are incredibly efficient though, especially with all those nifty JAs and such.

But I don't personally know many SCHs that would turn down a full-time Refresh if it was an option, lol.

Oh, and at the very least /SCH is a damn near requirement for any mage that isn't RDM main.