Black Mage, not a great DD anymore?

[Slib]

After playing this game since RoZ, I have seen Black Mage have its great times as the job to bring to events and other jobs get pushed aside because they weren't as useful as others. At 75 cap, Black Mage had a great place in many events and for its own solo fun, but now at 90 I have to say Black Mage has lost everything that it had at 75 compared to other DD jobs.

After playing in abyssea for a long time, I felt Black Mage had its own unique traits such as being able to one shot regular enemies easily to farm up azure faster or simply farm pop items. Also Black Mage has the ability to get yellow !! to help get seals and +2 items faster. The power of atmas and cruor buffs spoiled Black Mage a bit too much with refresh and almost double MP.

That all being said, MP cost of new spells for black mage became extremely high and it turned out to be okay in abyssea, but what is bad is outside abyssea, black mages don't provide much damage at all anymore when given a drawn out fight.

I have recently been playing outside abyssea and I have Paladin with Almace/Ochain and let me say, it even out DD's Black Mage if you press a fight where black mages have to rest and get MP after nuking 4 times. Even with 10 MP regen, you are looking at every 30 seconds you get 100 mp back and in that time my Paladin has already obtained 100% tp doing another ~1500 chant du cygne (outside abyssea) and this is not including the regular hits he is doing too whereas a BLM blizzard 5 will do ~ 2500 damage at the cost of 282 MP.

That means you will need to wait almost one minute and 30 seconds to get to nuke again without resting, or rest and do nothing to pull that damage back out which might be around 40 seconds to one minute to regain that MP while melee DD can just keep outputting at a much higher rate than you due to such a limited MP pool outside abyssea which makes convert half effective because your MP is halved.

What is depressing is my Paladin was the comparison to a Black Mages damage, and right now people are begging for Paladin to be better...

All that being said, TLDR version, Black Mage needs some sort of love where the cost of spells are concerned. Their MP pools are way too low for the cost of the new nukes, and even old ones can't keep up with the new level 90 items for melee jobs. Hope there is something done about it, because everytime I play Black Mage at an event that doesn't require Sleepga (which is rare now), I feel like I could be doing a lot more for the group.

[Raksha]

I felt Black Mage had its own unique traits such as being able to one shot regular enemies easily to farm up azure faster


If you kill a mob that isnt claimed to you (by 1-shotting, or any other means) you don't get lights from that mob.

I don't play BLM so I can't speak to the rest of your post.

[Slib]

Yeah, I usually open up with a sleep or bind then do a nuke to fix that.

[Darkwizardzin]

well... your right about alot of that... but your forgeting that we do have aspir and aspir II to help with our mp problems..Convert as well helps (that alone doubles our mp). Also outside abyssea you don't use tier V for exstended fights like that for this reason: like the am II spells the mp to damage ratio to a tier V is less then a tier 4.

For a long battle... you only cast tier 4/3 spells to get the max amount of damage done for your mp pool unless your group is setting up skill chains.. then you use a tier 5 with that to Magic burst it doing even more damage for your mp pool. Plus there is tons of hmp gear avalable that greatly lower the time a blm has to rest.

after all of what i've said above blm's damage output raises greatly then what you have said in your first post. Im not saying that you match other front line DD in damage over time because we don't... but the gap isn't as wide as you made it out to be plus we make up for it by our enfeebles: the sleep line, bind, break and gravity all play a part in crowd control which can more often then not save a party from danger.

In the end we are just as powerful as we were at 75 (thx to mana wall we are even more powerful). We can be just as effective as we were back then: deal damage while controling the flow of the battle. Nothing has changed in my opinion.

[Slib]

I agree on using the lower tier nukes, which I have in the past but it still comes to the same problem. Also I agree we just as powerful outside, but aspir and aspir 2 don't always work well depending on the type of monster if it had MP and not every monster has MP and my issue is seeing other jobs getting more than BLM would probably ever get as the level cap increases. (I might eat those words at 99).

Another thing to mention is the relic weapons of all 3 categories (relic, empyrean and mythic). All of them are terrible for Black Mage but nothing is really ever done about it and Aegis got a lot of love in a recent update. Really would love to see a caster weapon become better in terms of being useful for what the job mainly does.

[Inafking]

It's clear that SE does not like BLMs. Only proof I need is Fell Cleave. Masive AoE damage that does not generate enemity is insulting.

[Greggles]

On BLM/RDM, you can get 6 MP/tick in Refresh for when you idle. Owleyes / Refresh Hairpin / BLM+2 body / Serpentes set / Stearc Subligar. You can even get another one from the WoTG earring, making 7. Combine that with /RDM's refresh and that totals 10mp/tick outside of Abyssea.

Don't forget that you could also be /healing in between nukes if you have to wait more than 20 seconds. Also, yeah, Aspir and Aspir II when they're applicable, as well as Convert. You shouldn't be having too many MP issues outside of Abyssea.

[Rearden]

I liked the part where Fell Cleave doesn't generate enmity.

Quote of the day.

[Bubeeky]

usually when I'm on blm, the mobs die too quickly for mp to be a problem....the love that blm needs is mobs with more hp for us to play with!

[Meyi]

To be fair I soloed the majority of my CoP and the majority of my Magian weapons as my 90 BLM.

I think BLM is far more powerful than it's ever been. Mana Wall, Convert, and Refresh have made me so beastly. Not to mention my nuking body is the best refresh body in the game (2 mp a tick pieces were never available at 75). We have access to everything we had at 75 and then some.

[Gukai]

What you've said is correct on alot of accounts, about the new spells being MP-drains, and the aspect of drawn out fights.

The only thing any of us can do is make the most of every situation. When you're idle, have on all your refresh gear, including the weapon, and have refresh casted on yourself. When you're nuking go for the epeen always. I'm not saying to AM2 all the time - stick with the tier 3 and 4 but build up your blm to be lethal so those lower tier spells are brutal and you save MP. In the end, you'll find the mob looking hungrily at you and as you feel the jaws of death clamp around you when Mana Wall wears out you can close your eyes and smile... until you remember you forgot reraise. But ah well

[Babekeke]

you can close your eyes and smile... until you remember you forgot reraise. But ah well

QFT!

Stupid 10 char rule grrr!

[Alderin]

Mythic BLM staff still outperforms the magian staves. So no, not all the "legendary" weapons are terrible.

[Raksha]

Mythic BLM staff still outperforms the magian staves. So no, not all the "legendary" weapons are terrible.

No it doesnt.

Unless you mean while using Elemental Seal.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/103222-Dev-Tracker-(3-8-2011)?p=4705220&viewfull=1#post4705220

[Mojo]

A good BLM can actually outperform any kind of 'Fell Cleave' that melee jobs can do for a variety of reasons. I've been able to net 200K+ EXP/hour on my BLM completely solo. The DD capabilities of the job differ widely depending on what you're fighting, and also there are upsides and downsides for every kind of DD. Rating them on raw DD potential doesn't always work.

[Nawesemo]

.......... I get what your saying, or have a different take of it.

We're not able to be as Lazy as we once were and still preform as well.

or... that we actually have to "try" to out parse our friends during the fights.

I get nervous when I see SOMETHING like....


Nawesemo starts to casts Blizzard IV
XXX hits Xyz for 400 dmg
XXX criticals for 800 dmg
Nawesemo casts blizzard IV
Xyz takes 2900 dmg
XXX hits Xyz for 400 dmg
XXX hits Xyz for 400 dmg
XXX Criticals for 800 dmg
XXX WS's for 2400!! O.O
Nawesemo starts to casts thunder IV
XXX hits Xyz for 400
XXX hits Xyz for 400
Nawesemo casts thunder IV
Xyz takes 2900...

I do love seeing my Crits , but .. .:/ sadly I see them maybe 1/40 casts...

But yes we do have to work alot harder and muuuuch more careful (thank you enmity douse) to be as effective, and get our E peens on against our DD brothers, ..... ( f'in blue mage makes me SICK!!).... it shouldn't be like that though, :( ... we should ALWAYS be able to kill ourselves via one nuke's dmg in my honest opinion (as in our tier 5 lines need to be doing 5k outside abyssea under the right conditions against NM's (cerebrus, etc..)

(keep in mind my numbers are totally f'in out of my @ss and no particular mob nor dd in mind, (i think they allll got much more powerful than we got as far as increase in strength, my blm pride still insists we "can" outparse with the right support but, can't sustain our output vs, enmity ....despite our OVERWHELMING superiority ;)

[Bubeeky]

what kills me is how little the supposed elemental weaknesses matter....Blizz V will ultimately do as much or more damage than Water V against that NM Cerby in Altepa, even though supposedly fire is strong versus ice and weak to water >_> this so needs to be adjusted

[Infidi]

Didn't SE say they were adjusting some of the nms ele resistance/weakness because they were jacked up or something?