Job Trait: Auto-Refresh?

Abyssea indirectly addressed a major problem for BLM: MP recovery. BLM spells use an ungodly amount of MP. In Abyssea, Atmas (specifically Minikin Monstrosity, since I tend not to use any other Refresh Atmas) breathe new life into BLM and alleviate some of the hassle of MP management.

Before Abyssea, playing BLM involved an excessive need to rest and to manage MP. BLM has a wide array of powerful nukes, but outside of Abyssea, I regularly find myself choosing not to use BLM's job-defining spells in favor of conserving MP for Sleeps and Stuns. A resting BLM cannot effectively Stun anything!

Mana Wall and Enmity Douse were both fantastic additions to BLM, but I hope to see more adjustments. Like SMN and PLD, I hope that BLM will someday have an Auto-Refresh Job Trait. It doesn't need to be as powerful as Minikin Monstrosity's Refresh effect, but a natural Auto-Refresh Job Trait around 3 MP/tick or higher (at the level cap) would be a tremendous boon to BLM.

The Refresh spell and Refresh gear can only do so much. An Auto-Refresh Job Trait would be a simple, effective, and greatly appreciated adjustment to BLM. Abyssea Atmas finally allowed BLMs to actually play BLM, and I for one would like to continue playing BLM (instead of playing Resting Mage/Sleeping Mage/Stunning Mage) outside of Abyssea.

On the one hand, I agree that Black Mages have severe MP efficiency issues. Even considering the MP options opened up to Black Mages by the availability of Convert and Refresh from /RDM, or Dark Arts, Sublimation, and /SCH stratagems, the disconnect between BLM play in Abyssea and BLM play outside of Abyssea (especially when fighting mobs on which Aspir and Aspir II are ineffective) is pretty huge. Even with latent Refresh from my earring and body pieces, I find myself running out of MP fairly consistently.

That said, BLM's primary role in many outside-Abyssea fights is not to do damage, but rather, to do "crowd control" activities and TP move / damaging spell mitigation with Stun. Some people like this, some people don't, but I'm not sure that this is actually pinned to MP issues - a casting BLM can't sleep or stun effectively, either. Black Mage's damage-effectiveness as compared to the heavy melee DDs outside of Abyssea is contingent on timing and luck (magic burst, spikes of enmity, spell resistance), although this is less the case now with the cap at 90 rather than 75.

Personally, I'd be inclined to suggest a FFXIV option here, although I'm not sure how feasible it would be - change Aspir and Aspir II such that they return MP even from monsters which do not have MP to drain. I've noticed in play that playing BLM against Aspir-able mobs (with Aspir II in the picture) is a completely different ballgame than playing it against things with no MP, and the ability to siphon MP from any monster was something I greatly enjoyed about XIV's MP mechanics.

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It doesn't need to be as powerful as Minikin Monstrosity's Refresh effect, but a natural Auto-Refresh Job Trait around 3 MP/tick or higher (at the level cap) would be a tremendous boon to BLM.

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this would be equivalent to Refresh 1 and I can't see it being an idea that SqEnix will be thinking about especially with the ability for Refresh from subjobs. Even a 1mp per tick would be nice to see but every mage job is demanding that but the reason pld and SMN have it is due to their inability to rest while fighting. Smn cant rest with an avitar out or have to switch elemental for siphon if possible and PLD is the first person (in exp. parties) is the last one to that gets the option to rest and always the first one up to voke the mob. now with that said yes BLM can be used as an effective crowd control but there are much better jobs that can do this like RDM/BLM or BRD. Maybe a 2nd stun could be helpful to eliminate some of the trying to rest and recast because thats just not very nice to do.
Some of the casting burden was removed when they improved the casting time on elemental spells which does make things nice but MP consumption is a problem. If you compare a BLM to a DD such as a SAM you can get more damage from spells in the course of a battle but the time it takes to cast those spells gimps the ability to do that damage. where a SAM can meditate every 3 minutes and sekkinoni every 5 (natural) and can deal out a lot of damage shortly and then between fights the timers tick down.
Like WHM AF3 they have the ability to gain MP back based on cures, I would like to see this for BLM to gain back MP based on MP damage dealt Even at 5% of this an AMII spell can give you back 50% of what you just spent and considering the recast time it isn't that terrible of an idea. Now you have spells like your ja spells and me having an elvaan I can cast 3 of these spells and be out of MP and having even 5 % of that back would allow me to cast at least 2 more.. Now im not saying this needs or should be the exact mechanincs in it but thats what the developers can figure out but it would be a nice idea and something worth looking into because a blm on their knees resting is no better then a a melee without TP

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Like WHM AF3 they have the ability to gain MP back based on cures, I would like to see this for BLM to gain back MP based on MP damage dealt Even at 5% of this an AMII spell can give you back 50% of what you just spent and considering the recast time it isn't that terrible of an idea. Now you have spells like your ja spells and me having an elvaan I can cast 3 of these spells and be out of MP and having even 5 % of that back would allow me to cast at least 2 more.. Now im not saying this needs or should be the exact mechanincs in it but thats what the developers can figure out but it would be a nice idea and something worth looking into because a blm on their knees resting is no better then a a melee without TP

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Assuming it doesn't stack with aoe nukes, allowing you to nuke infinitely, that would probably be an excellent, and fair fix for blm, i think.

They tried to fix Blm by giving it the MP Conserve Trait and in theory it works. However, because of the low proc rate, it just isn't practical. Maybe if they changed MP Conserve to something that always procs but only conserving about 20% of the MP used and then have the upgrades of the traits increasing to a maximum of 50% MP conserved and this way blm can have it's own unique trait set.

Personaly I don't like the idea of giving blm more mp tools... we have already gotten so many since the level cap increase first started. If we get too much mp support then it will lessen the difficulty of playing the job.. and I don't want that.

If anything they should increase the conserve mp trait for blm (but not by too much) anything else would be overkill.

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Originally Posted by Darkwizardzin

Personaly I don't like the idea of giving blm more mp tools... we have already gotten so many since the level cap increase first started. If we get too much mp support then it will lessen the difficulty of playing the job.. and I don't want that.

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We've got a lot, and yet it's still not enough to keep up with melee dds. A decent whm with some clubs can out damage a blm. It's nice that blm is no longer the worst dd in the game, but i think we could still get a little more.

Personally, I think BLM is fine as is. Considering we have access to two of the most potent MP tools around in Aspir & Aspir II, along with Conserve MP, and Refresh/Convert from Red Mage subjob, do we honestly NEED anything else?

I have had an issue with Black Mage MP even as a Taru since the level cap increase. I feel that even with convert and conserve MP, that the issues I have are related more to the new MP costs of our new tier of nukes, Tier 5.

Ever since the release of the new tier nukes, our MP pool hasn't gone up much at all to compensate the new MP costs for the tier 5 nukes and also the damage output of the tier 5 Nukes aren't worth it if you are outside of abyssea because I found the tier 4 nukes to be more efficient for Damage per MP cost, but in Abyssea I have no problem casting the Tier 5 nukes because I have almost a double sized MP pool AND high mp refresh. A higher MP pool allows convert to be more efficient and allows a higher chance at getting a conserve MP to proc without running out of MP in 3 blizzard 5's.

So all that being said, if you ask me BLM need something more than just a simple auto refresh. I think they should take a look at the MP costs of each nuke and lower tier 5 only or lower all nukes by a total %, to keep them scaling the same.

I've played the job since USA launch and it's always been my main but I think currently I have less of an MP problem than I did in the past.

With the increased Elemental Magic skill due to higher levels and gear with more readily available INT our DoT spells (Burn et al) are actually a much more viable source of damage than they were before. With 150 INT each spell does -5 hp/tick. That's -15 hp/tick. It helps a lot on NM's - even in Abyssea when low-manning. As far as I know there isn't a discovered higher tier of damage for more than 150 INT but I would guess there is, or will be. Stack this with Poison II's -10 (also lands more readily now) and Bio II's -8 and you have a good DoT of -33hp. I know it doesn't seem like much but it's cheap MP damage. -13INT on the monster can increase your nukes considerably as well. In the time it takes to get your Blizzard V off, the DoT's have done around 100 damage and will increase your nuke by about 100 damage as well, sometimes more depending on monster (if you use the burn stack).

I generally run out of MP just in time for a new convert. Sometimes I don't even get to do that if I have a WHM in the party.

I don't think the answer to "fixing" the MP issue some of you are experiencing is to give more MP or native Refresh but rather looking to the older spells we don't use so much instead of focusing only on the new goodies SE gives us.