How I Suggest Improving Black Mage

With Sortie reviving the job in the minds of the community everyone wants to suggest things to improve Black Mage. Which, to be fair, it does need some system level adjustments. However, much of the suggestions heavily focus on either damage for a job that already caps damage or core system related aspects.
I do not think system related adjustments are going to happen, and there are better ways to approach this. That being said, here are my suggestions.

Black Mage Adjustments:

Job Ability

• Manafont - Change duration to 3 minutes.
• Elemental Seal - Change recast to 5 minutes.
• Subtle Sorcery - Change duration to 1.5 minutes
• Manawall - No adjustment
• Enmity Douse - No adjustment
• Cascade - Change the ability completely as it is nearly worthless.

Cascade adjustment ideas off the top of my head would include:

• 5 Minute Recast, 2 Minute Duration - Improves Occult Acumen effect for the duration of the ability.
  
• 5 Minute Recast, 2 Minute Duration - Take full advantage of day/weather effects for the duration of the ability.
  
• 5 Minute Recast 3 Minute Duration - Elemental Magic Recast -25% for the dration of the ability.

I would personally prefer the occult acumen adjustment idea.

Gear Related Adjustements

• More occult acumen options.
• -Aja related equipment to either extend the cummulative magic duration or bonus further. Bonus further meaning it increases the benefit to the existing cap in less casts.

Mechanic Adjustmenets

• Improve the power (fTP) of all staff weaponshills and most club weapon skills.
• Raise Enfeebling Magic Skill from a C to a B rank.
• Raise Staff Skill from a B- to an A- rank.
• Improve the power of Blaze Spikes, Ice Spikes, and Shock Spikes.
• Keep the AoE magic reduction penalty at the existing -10% per foe , but cap the reduction at -33% before any other specific AoE reduction penalties on a foe such as in Odyssey or Divergence - Jeuno.

System Related Adjustments

• Give BLM Impact natively.
• Provide BLM access to Earth Crusher, Sunburst, and Cataclysm natively
• Reduce the global delay/cooldown of spells from 3 seconds to 2 seconds. The same delay as Weapon Skills or Job Abilities. There is no reason for spells to have a 33% higher action delay after casting.
• Adjust -Aja related spells so that the Cumulative Elemental Magic Bonus also reduces the consecutive nuking penalty (aka "Nuke Wall") by 25%. Overwritten by, and does not overwrite Rayke effects 50% reduction to the penalty.

I do not believe the nuke wall should be removed, but I do feel BLM can seize it's future in the minds of the community by reducing the penalty slightly during the duration effect of -Aja magic.
This shouldn't be difficult to add I would imagine. Rayke already interacts like this in the code and would just be reused with the enfeebling effect of -Ajas with a lower debuff priority.

Otherwise, we don't need the extreme or fancy changes to BLM most players are calling for. The fact no one seems to call for the same global cooldown for magic as abilities or weapon skills always surprises me.

If I had to ask for one extremely unlikely adjustment that is far more involved than the previous:

One Unlikely Request

• Skillchain Magic Burst window should not be interrupted for the entire 9 second window by another weaponskill unless a new skillchain is made. This would allow BLM to fit into a wider array of setups.

3 full minutes of free nuking seems too good to me.

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However, much of the suggestions heavily focus on either damage for a job that already caps damage

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If BLM already caps damage, why aren't people using it? several other jobs wish they could do that. I'm not one of those people who sees BLM as super weak and needing the crap buffed out of it. In fact I'm confused why "I cap damage" and "I'm not strong enough" can be used to describe the same job. Is it MP? Is it enmity?

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I do not believe the nuke wall should be removed,

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This is something we've talked about and again, I disagree. I generally oppose artificial, job-specific restrictions like this that have no justification other than "we said so." Same goes for things like the BST command range limit and Astral Conduit. Both of which can be at least partially addressed with tweaks to the abilities themselves (conduit) or other minor changes (make the BST command range slightly higher, but still shorter than before to allow a little flexibility)

Bringing up or implementing special job and content specific ability restrictions only serves to highlight the flaws in how those effects were designed in the first place, and how that is what should be addressed rather than changing the content. Conduit for instance can be made less OP without content-specific restrictions preventing its use entirely.

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Provide BLM access to Earth Crusher, Sunburst, and Cataclysm natively

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And SMN as well. SMN has higher staff skill than BLM. I've been using /SAM with my melee setup, occasionally using sekkanoki and apogee to do double darkness magic bursts (or magic bursting both darkness with Matsui-P when he's available). While my focus has been on this, using GoT, it seems really dumb that essentially being the highest skill staff user that might actually use it, I lose access to most of the magical WS by subbing a job that would help me use them. SMN has more reason to gain and use TP to make skillchains with summons. So if BLM's melee capability is increased, then so too should SMN's.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

3 full minutes of free nuking seems too good to me.


If BLM already caps damage, why aren't people using it? several other jobs wish they could do that. I'm not one of those people who sees BLM as super weak and needing the crap buffed out of it. In fact I'm confused why "I cap damage" and "I'm not strong enough" can be used to describe the same job. Is it MP? Is it enmity?

This is something we've talked about and again, I disagree. I generally oppose artificial, job-specific restrictions like this that have no justification other than "we said so." Same goes for things like the BST command range limit and Astral Conduit. Both of which can be at least partially addressed with tweaks to the abilities themselves (conduit) or other minor changes (make the BST command range slightly higher, but still shorter than before to allow a little flexibility)

Bringing up or implementing special job and content specific ability restrictions only serves to highlight the flaws in how those effects were designed in the first place, and how that is what should be addressed rather than changing the content. Conduit for instance can be made less OP without content-specific restrictions preventing its use entirely.


And SMN as well. SMN has higher staff skill than BLM. I've been using /SAM with my melee setup, occasionally using sekkanoki and apogee to do double darkness magic bursts (or magic bursting both darkness with Matsui-P when he's available). While my focus has been on this, using GoT, it seems really dumb that essentially being the highest skill staff user that might actually use it, I lose access to most of the magical WS by subbing a job that would help me use them. SMN has more reason to gain and use TP to make skillchains with summons. So if BLM's melee capability is increased, then so too should SMN's.

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You already get infinite free nuking as long as it does damage with the AF body. Allowing a body change is minor for a 1H ability.

People are using BLM. So a better way to rephrase that is why isn't BLM more ubiquitous if it can deal out 9s. Well, besides the obvious factor of not all foes taking magic damage well. BlM requires SCs to deal that damage, and that requires more work than spamming one WS and AFKing. BLM as a magic damage dealer with a condition is great. The issue is how the community rejects conditions. There are a few edges to round out, and I don't think damage is the issue for BLM.

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People are using BLM. So a better way to rephrase that is why isn't BLM more ubiquitous if it can deal out 9s.

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Unless BLM is a severely underutilized job, I'm not really sure we should be messing with it.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Unless BLM is a severely underutilized job, I'm not really sure we should be messing with it.

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Sometimes I wonder if you play this game or just log on and roam.

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Sometimes I wonder if you play this game or just log on and roam.

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I mean, I don't see people on BLM that often, but you explicitly stated that people are using it. I'm literally going off what you said.

What exactly is the problem, if the job is being used for content?

And look, I'm not (normally) a super hardcore min maxing player. I always have a purpose when I play, but I'm not out there seeking perfection or I wouldn't be doing silly things like bursting self skillchains on SMN. And frankly, if I wanted to be mister perfect, I probably wouldn't be on SMN at all.

What? Give Cataclysm to black mage? That's ridiculous! I mean, it obviously makes sense to only give Cataclysm, an area of effect dark-based magical staff weaponskill to... let me check my notes here...

* Light-based sword-and-shield defender, Paladin
* Guy who just punches things a lot, Monk
* Totally non-magical melee jack-of-all-trades Warrior
* Light magic specialist, general non-combatant, and noted club enthusiast, White Mage
* A smaller, more enhancing-oriented, generally wand-toting black mage, Geomancer

Yep. All of those sound like they have excellent design and gameplay reasons to be more inclined toward having Cataclysm than the dark magic leaning, super magic focused, area of effect wielding, primarily staff-dependant (excepting certain dual wield builds) Black Mage.

(Okay seriously like, maybe Geomancer has some legitimate claim to the weaponskill because they do have their own unique area spells, use dark magic like drain and aspir, and technically can use a staff, but there's no reasonable argument for them being more suited to it than Black Mage.)

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Originally Posted by Zenion

What? Give Cataclysm to black mage? That's ridiculous! I mean, it obviously makes sense to only give Cataclysm, an area of effect dark-based magical staff weaponskill to... let me check my notes here...

* Light-based sword-and-shield defender, Paladin
* Guy who just punches things a lot, Monk
* Totally non-magical melee jack-of-all-trades Warrior
* Light magic specialist, general non-combatant, and noted club enthusiast, White Mage
* A smaller, more enhancing-oriented, generally wand-toting black mage, Geomancer

Yep. All of those sound like they have excellent design and gameplay reasons to be more inclined toward having Cataclysm than the dark magic leaning, super magic focused, area of effect wielding, primarily staff-dependant (excepting certain dual wield builds) Black Mage.

(Okay seriously like, maybe Geomancer has some legitimate claim to the weaponskill because they do have their own unique area spells, use dark magic like drain and aspir, and technically can use a staff, but there's no reasonable argument for them being more suited to it than Black Mage.)

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Well like I said, just include SMN too. The jobs that natively get these WS are mostly jobs that would rarely if ever use a staff in the first place.
Meanwhile both black mage and summoner are rarely using anything else, and they don't get these WS without subbing certain jobs? it doesnt make much sense.

Aeonic staff wielders: BLM SMN SCH.
Aeonic club wielders: WHM GEO.

Which of these has more staff weaponskill options?
Why? Also, why do WAR MNK PLD have access to those WS as well yet not the Aeonic staff wielders?

(please don't leave SCH out of a change to native access to staff WS)

Maybe instead of adding a 2nd additional effect to -ja spells that reduces the nuke wall penalty a tier, change {ancient magic, ninjutsu, enspell2} to have that effect on the same element instead of a slightly lower elemental resistance of the strong element to the above mentioned spell.
None of the above mentioned are ever even used for their current additional effect anyway. It'll breathe some new life into the spells.