Thread: Ideas to Improve The Black Mage (for 4.2 and beyond!)

Originally Posted by LeeraSorlan

i do savage, most of V3S mechanics can be solved by using a regular swiftcast or atherial manpulation, altre roitte and its classical elements are very predictable, with a few of them lining up with ur leylines (between the eyes for no downtime) and the rest can be eased through with swiftcast.minimal loss in V1S, V2S is pretty butter too, V3S is more specific but is still possible to minimize the downtime, the only real headaches in terms of mechanics is being chosen for a stack/swap, which is a hinderance to every job and can force you to refresh ur astral/umbrals sooner than ud prefer, but thats really as far as uncontrollable RNG goes in VV3S. books can be solved by simpley turreting on your square, theres plenty of time to move to it if you arent there from previous emchanics before she does it again, cone waltz can be done by aetherial manipulatiion, there is PLENTY of time to move into position so that u can wait for one of ur party to move in, vines are annnoying, but only last a few seconds (melee are punished more for this mechanic), and the iceberg once again can be aetherial manipulated, not to mention the earlier phases of the fight, the single safe square repeaers, use atherial, vines, refresh stance just before u need to run, use swiftcast if need be to keep uptime while running. so on and so on..

If you do Savage, then you should be familiar with the two times that Alte Roite choose a random "safe" position when utilizing Classical Elements, correct? The first, Roulette, which has A, B, C or D as a safe spot and having to scramble to your position because Levinbolt and then the second that's also lined with a Clamp. Both will cause a Black Mage problems, but OS1 isn't that hard for BLM but those two mechanics will cause strife.

V2's issues aren't AS many, and I have stated that it's the most BLM friendly, but it has its moments, particularly for avoiding the Main Quakes.

I don't know what kind of V3 you've been playing if the stack/swap are the only issue in your book in that run. Remember, OS3 has you:

• Deal with positioning for Sword Dance, which WILL happen because the tank's position isn't set in stone.
• Mindjack and the thorns WILL force you into moving no matter what.
• The first Queen's Waltz is followed immediately by Ribbit, forcing movement or forcing you to stay still
• Place Dark Token, which comes with a bonus Queen's Waltz
• Magic Hammer + Books
• Books + Library Spellblade Holy, which will either mark you with a stack, a red target or nothing, with your positioning depending on what you got, and this is NOT role based
• MORE mindjacks, now with bonus Dark Tokens!
• MORE Sword Dances! MORE Stack/Swaps!
• Whatever would come past Iron Giant + Ninjas

This is not a fight that Black Mage was designed to fight in, not in its current state. It's difficult to stay in place long enough to utilize the rotation and opener, and it's an utter mess.

Originally Posted by LeeraSorlan

Im not disagreeing that BLM has it punishing to mess up/deal with mechanics, because it does...im just disagreeing with changing that, because thats one of the things i enjoy about BLM, i enjoy being punished for things i could potentially work around. and so far in stormblood, every mechanic that punishes me greatly, that i cant control, also punishes every other job just as much. slidecasting and knowing when u can minimize movement is key.

The problem isn't just the fact that we're easy to punish. The problem is that half of the time while playing, it feels that the entire game is designed to punish BLM. No other job will suffer as harshly as Black Mage JUST FOR DODGING THE MECHANIC. And those that would, have it mitigated. How do I know? Ruin IV and Dreadwyrm Trance's Ruin III removed that problem for SMN by becoming instant cast.

Originally Posted by LeeraSorlan

and of course you will notice the dmg decrease when u are still leveling, because u are essentially the reworked lvl 60 version of BLM, i rather meant at lvl 70, it doesnt "feel" like you are weaker, due to gear differences. at least to me anyway.

Oh, it's weaker than what it would be without the nerfs, alright. In fact, it feels only slightly more powerful than pre-nerf HW, which shouldn't be the case after you LEVEL UP.

It's not just that we start off weaker, we STAY weaker through Stormblood, until we get Foul... but that's still a let down.

Originally Posted by LeeraSorlan

Im curious about your BLM opener in V2S that has you somehow able to drop enochian? what i do for that fight is precast swiftcast and being my opener walking into the fight with the tank, and planting myself on the safe square, there is no mechanics that require you to move for the first 30second of V2s otherwise. so its very much impossible to drop enochian due to mechanics during ur opener, infact, the only current savage boss ive had to adjust my opener around was V3S if i was unlucky to be picked by the stack/swap and V4S exdeath due to blizzard 3 aoes (that just involves timing triple cast later than id prefer). you should have 0 issues with V1S opener, 0 issues with V2S opener, 0 issues with shinryu and so on

My opener is generally as follows:

Thunder III > Blizzard III > Enochian, Leylines > Blizzard IV > Fire III > Triplecast + Swiftcast > Sharpcast > Fire IV x 3/4, Fire, Fire IV x2, Convert+Fire III, Fire IV x2, Blizzard III. Where things may go wrong would be the misplacement of the safe square, or when the opener is eventually repeated upon the cooldown of Convert, such as, inconveniently, before -100 Gs or Long Drop.

As of currently, it is nearly impossible to get a full opener on OS3, because it's more likely that you'll be hit by stack/swap than not, and you'll still need to gather for Sword Dance. I've actually switched to the ARR rotation and have been hitting a higher DPS with THAT than the stormblood rotation.

Originally Posted by Llugen

To be frank, I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea of BLM raise either, but if you consider that statics balance composition around roles not actual classes, the caster role is off-balance. Refer to the "SMN/RDM should lose raise or BLM should get raise" thread for comprehensive thoughts on this, but tl;dr, BLM not having raise translates directly into BLM being less viable for progression over rez dispenser and SMN, and it should be able to meaningfully compete for the role slot. Without this consideration, the logic becomes "Ok play RDM/SMN for prog and go back to BLM later", and that's exactly what we as a community want to avoid.

Personally, the trouble is that we don't have another pure caster there. Summoner has Rez because it's linked to Arcanist, which has Rez for SCH, but RDM has it because of the lore. To compare, both Samurai and Monk are the closest things to pure DPS in the Melee slot, and Dragoon and Ninja have higher support. Ninja and Dragoon don't get a 720 potency attack just for sharing the same slot and no other healer but White Mage gets an emergency heal as powerful as Benediction AND have a second emergency heal on top of it.

in regards to V3S, i did explain how the mechanics go, but it was jumbled together so allow me to explain more neatly.

1. Sword dance. assuming true north, simple use aetherial manipulation on the closest target to the boss, and adjust yourself accordingly, if done right, a second, maybe 2 seconds of downtime.


2. Mindjack and thorns are an annoyance, yes, the best thing you can really do here is refresh ur stances early to minimize potential loss (should point out melees and other jobs are also punished by this too)

3. Your leylines will be up during this, use leylines in the center of the boss, when ribbit begins casting, slidecast behind her, you have time, you are moving about 2 steps assuming you got under her correctly, less than a second of downtime if done right, and you never leave leylines.


4. palace dark meaning the one safe square? simply cast and do nothing, then aetherial manipulation when your group is in the correct square, a second of downtime at best. less than melee unless the tank drags the boss properly (rare in pug)


5. assuming youve been keeping triple cast on CD, it will be up between the time palace dark happens and books happen, this lets you triple cast over to your book square. get hit by the book, aetherial manipulation to the tank to prepare for pig stack, abuse slipcasting/lucky fire3 procs to run back to ur square, leylines is up at this point, use it on the very inner edge of the square, move back to the very edge by slipcasting/fire3 proc/ forced halting of casting, minimum of 1 second downtime, magic hammer + books are being cast now.. use between the lines to return to leylines, on the very edge of your square, dodging magic hamemr, minimum of 1 second downtime, potential loss if just beggining a cast and having to interupt, no more than 1 second.


6. doing outer books. depending on what you get, just slidecast into position/swiftcast to it if possible, refresh stance if needed due to being unable to refresh for 3 to 4 seconds.


7 mindjack repears, another forced downtime, simply refresh stance to avoid dropping enochian/prevent using transpose. nothhing else you can do.


8. vines, hope you have triplecast up/swiftcast. otherwise accept a 2 second downtime and move on (melees are punished worse)

Edit - Stack/swap is annoying, this is true, and theres not much you can do besides refresh stance to prevent enochian from dropping, between this, vines and mindjack, these 3 are the worst mechanics to deal with because they are the only ones u cant outright, personally deal with either good or bad, you just have to accept your loss, but there are still things you can do to minimize the loss, as explained.


9. Everything else --- simply do everything you just did in combination, abuse slipcasting, make use of leylines, make use of aetherial manipulation.


Everything in this tutorial of how i handle V3S has very minimal downtime. sure, i can accept that some times things arent gonna go your way, but planning ahead is key, and you can very well plan ahead.




As to your comment about V1S and its RNG classical elements, assuming youve been using leylines on CD, it will be up for this classical. you dont have to move into position at all because yoou can between the lines the knockback and avoid fireballs. the jump to the edge after it can be aetherial manipulated, accept the loss from being knocked back here, not much u can do to prevent it.

not only that (on the RNG part with the leylines, you shouldnt even have to move back OUT, unless you are running 3 melees and the tanks also can get to mid, there should be plenty of room for u to chill near the mid when u rush to leylines, even if not, there is a split second atfer ice that you (the melee in this instance) can move away from each other to avoid levin bolt overlapping, so thats also possible.


from the explanations you are giving me, it definantly sounds like (no offense) you have not properly optimized BLM in these fights

Originally Posted by LeeraSorlan

from the explanations you are giving me, it definantly sounds like (no offense) you have not properly optimized BLM in these fights

I did a good detail of research into my rotation, and my opener. However, OS3 is just simply not made for Black Mage. Like. At all. I'm mostly fine in OS2, and OS1 is fine until anything to do with ice comes up.

I never have Triplecast off cooldown without Leylines because I originally had the two lined up, and I'd rather not miss future Octafire IV bursts.

I see the major points as these.
Astral/Umbral timers double penalizing a moving mage (casters already cant do damage while moving, which means the penalty is already there):
Solution - remove the Timer entirely.
Procs cannot stack and cannot be used tactically.
Solution: Procs now stack so that they can be stored up, duration is removed or set to a very high value.
Umbral Ice spells and phase are not helpful. There's no reason to WANT to cast a Ice spell, it's a universal damage loss.
Solution - Remove all Blizz spells, rename the Thunder DoTs to Blizzard and change their damage type to Ice. Change Thunderstorm to Coldsnap (same effect, new name).
Blizzard DoT ticks proc Firestarter to extend Astral Fire phases, Fire spells proc Coldsnap(formerly thunderstorm) to make Umbral into a sort of Burst Damage phase depending on the number of stacks in play. Coldsnap and Firestarter only affect Ice I,II,III or Fire I,II,III spells that are cast while under the effect of Umbral Ice or Astral Fire respectively. Remove all damage penalties from Umbral Ice, have it increase the ice damage same as Astral does for Fire.

What about Thunder?
Thunder spells are now instant Direct Damage spells for use in high mobility situations. They have no effect on, nor effected by, umbral or Astral phases. Thunder II is a copy of Blizzard II changed to Lightening damage and without cast time.


Ok...what about Enochian?
Enochian is now a trait.
Blizz IV works the same as it did before: It's a Direct Damage spell that creates Umbral hearts.
Fire IV works a little different. It now adds 3 Astral Minds, which increase the potency of the next 3 Ice Spells cast.
Each time a heart or mind is consumed, it adds to the Enochian gauge. Which when full allows the casting of Foul.

And lastly.
Sleep: No change to sleep itself, but when the spell is resisted or breaks it causes the effect 'groggy' which decreases the enemies offensive capabilities for a time. This gives it usefulness when CC is not useful. Also, remove the HW and SB obsession with Adds or Trash being Sleep immune.

Edit: I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the gordian knot that the Fire spells have become. Something about Fire I, III, and IV seems 'off' to me but I haven't been able to put my finger on it. I think they are just too similar.

I like that you pointed out the gabling part of BLM. Many people love to complain of their own job's rng, MNKs been doing that a lot lately, but BLM's rng is a gamble that fundamentally changes the rotation and how they'll move and fit spells into party buffs. Even sharpcasting becomes a gamble because of the nature of Thunder and many don't really realize that.

As for mobility, while mobility is mostly fine for experienced BLMs, its a massive factor holding people from accepting them into parties because many many players have a hard time with it, so it just have become a stigma for the job and making mobility easier would help with the job's viability on low skilled parties and welcome more players to it. Though this will not fix BLM's real issues.

In the other BLM threads people always talk of majorly the same two things: BLM is not welcomed in low skilled groups because its a job that low skilled players mostly do bad with; BLM is not accepted in high skilled groups because it doesn't deal enough damage. Both should be adressed. On top of that BLM has a few useless buttons like Freeze and Blizzard II (you can kind of consider Fire II into it past lv68) and I wonder if SE will do something with those like they did with Tri-Bind.

BLM has so many issues that I don't even know what they will or should adress.

Originally Posted by LeeraSorlan

Correct me if im reading wrong, but are you saying you sit on triple cast until u can line it up with leylines?

that is going to lessen your DPS alot more than saving it to get one or two more fire 4s in, triple cast in a way is also a speed buff, because fire 4 has a shorter recast time than cast time, thats 20 seconds youd be sitting on triple cast, each time. so i wouldnt recommend that

What I mean is that I'm saving Triplecast + Swiftcast for Leylines, so I use Leylines, Fire III, and then use Triple+Swift to speed up my Fire IVs even further than just the Haste buff, putting it essentially on the GCD.

Edit: Tzain... you're really suggesting a ground up rework to Black Mage!? That's... not gonna work well in the end.